Traversing Sustainability with an Urban Farmer

hello

i’m vani murthy and i am an urban farmer

i live on the third floor of an

apartment and i compost my kitchen waste

and i grow my food

most of the waste that we generate is

banked

in a plastic cover it could be a black

bag or it could be a polythene bag

and this bag travels and i’m going to

talk to you about the story of where

this

this bag actually goes and what it does

to the environment

so most of the times we leave it outside

our homes

and by the next morning the dogs have

ripped it open and it is thrown

all over the road another place where

this bag ends is in some drains

and you know when it rains the drains

get clogged it’s maybe because of these

bags

otherwise these bags end up in the

corner of our street

where many people dump their garbage and

sometimes it gets burnt

and it creates air pollution another way

uh the bag travels out of our homes

is in the trucks it goes out to the

landfills

and landfills are very contaminating

place

there is also a bag that goes into the

lakes

once i was walking in the sankey tank it

is

it is a lovely lake and just

above me a bag came trashing into the

water

and somebody had just chucked this bag

from the fence above

so it also ends up in water bodies

in rivers in oceans and everywhere

it pollutes and what really happens at

the landfill

it is just a dumping yarn the city’s

waste gets collected

and lorries and lorries go and dump the

waste it’s all in mixed form

and there is the organic waste that

comes out of our kitchen

that starts to break down in anaerobic

conditions

and methane gets released and methane is

one of the greenhouse gases

that contribute to the global warming

and we are all seeing the climate change

we are all seeing such

erratic climates around and one of the

reasons is

methane which is 24 25 times worse than

carbon dioxide

and in this landfill i visited 10 years

back

and i’ll give you a sense of what it

feels to be there in that muck

it is surrounded by villages it’s in the

outskirts of a city

and it is mountains of garbage it’s just

mountains of garbage

and you know there is a black

liquid that runs off these landfills

that enter our groundwater and it seeps

into the soil around

and most of the people in those villages

are growing our food

when you pump water in their bore wells

you get a black liquid

that shows how much of this dark fluid

which is highly toxic

entering the ground water so you can see

that the landfill is a place where

uh it it pollutes the air the water

and the soil that grows our food and

whatever we are throwing out is

somewhere coming back to us

in some form of the other and it’s

extremely important for us to understand

this

before we take an action uh to you know

say that we will contribute positively

uh to the climate change now that we

have seen all the problems

that waste generates or waste creates to

the environment and to the people

on this planet let us look at the

solutions that

we have and uh every citizen on this

planet becomes a part of the solution

because

he is a generator of the waste and once

we recognize

that the waste that we generate can be

uh you know diverted away from these

landfills or getting dumped anywhere and

everywhere

recognize it as a great resource that

can recycle

it can be composted and we completely

take responsibility of the waste that we

generate

so there are simple things that we can

do uh you know on a

as a daily practice one look at waste

uh you know make a waste audit in our

homes and find out

uh what is it that we are generating

then we get to know

there are so many things that need not

be generated so we first

reduce the amount of waste one of the

ways

of reducing is to refuse anything that

is used once

and discard it they are the single use

disposables

uh that become a culture right now it’s

very convenient

so if we can just refuse these single

use

disposables will be generating less

waste and in spite of that we still have

waste

we look at different categories in which

they can be

you know aggregated there is this dry

waste

which is recyclable that can be going to

a recycling

center there is the wet waste that can

be composted

and also there is one one category of

waste which is a reject waste

which which needs to be actually given

to the municipality to be treated

so you can see we have reduced it almost

by 90 percent

because 60 of the waste that we generate

comes from our kitchen

it is our wet compostable waste and

another 30

is dry recyclables it is paper

plastic metal and glass and of course

the reject is a very small portion that

is 10

so if we can just reverse the entire

waste management

by reducing and understanding our waste

and you know diverting it away from the

landfill

composting is a very exciting activity

that all of us can do uh i am an

urbanite

and uh we we don’t i don’t have any

excuse

not to compost because when i look into

that black bag

i see resource i see wealth i see

health and i see livelihood because all

the three

things that that that you know gets

resolved

when you actually look at the black bag

as as as a fantastic resource

that need not get lost so we are uh

saving resources and we are also looking

at

uh you know creating something out of it

which

which which gives livelihood to the

people who work in the waste

and also by composting we are putting

back great organic matter

back into soil because today when you

look at agriculture

agriculture is completely uh modernized

there is so much of chemical fertilizers

being used

uh you know there is you know

the food that is grown is actually toxic

it is poison on a plate

because chemicals fertilizers pesticides

they all have become a part of our

agriculture which was not so

in in days uh you know where the

agriculture was

best practices were all the natural

methods of forming

where the organic matter was a big part

of the soil the soil was

alive it had microorganisms it had

earthworms it had everything that gives

a plant the nourishment

and the plant in turn gives nourishment

to us so that cycle has been broken

because of the degradation of land

there is no life in land and this

organic matter that we generate at home

can build that beautiful soil and grow

our food

so we understand what is food uh

how so when you compost that’s what you

learn

you learn that you are creating this

amazing magical living soil

which which which goes into your soil to

grow your food

and that how we also understand

that we need to put healthy food into

our body

not food that has so much chemicals

because today

there are so many uh issues with health

cancer being one of the big things that

happens

it’s all because so much of chemicals

are going into our body

so uh composting growing our own food

gives us a path to choose food that are

uh healthy with nutritious and

sustainable you know the food that’s

grown in a living soil is the

sustainable way

it regenerates uh the land uh there is

uh

the farming is natural and uh it is

there is not much of uh you know health

issues when you eat such

food composting is not a complicated

process composting is as simple as you

think it can be

it’s just a experiential learning there

is a learning curve

you you there are challenges which help

you to learn better

uh it is about understanding the

breakdown of organic matter

we just need to look at the process

itself

it is about the rich uh

peels the vegetable peels the fruit

fields things that come out of a kitchen

that uh you know have to be uh used

in in a particular process or in

particular conditions

and even if you have a small balcony we

all can compost

it’s about the greens which is high in

nitrogen and the browns

that is high in carbon so it’s your wet

peels

and the dry leaves that are all around

putting them together adding a culture

putting in microbes

to accelerate the process uh taking a

container because we all live in urban

spaces we don’t have ground

to compost and putting them together

introducing oxygen by turning the pile

and

yes that’s where magic happens because

all the microorganisms

start to break down the compost and it’s

so exciting to see

something that was in the form of fields

and

something that was waste that we would

throw away turns into this beautiful

black fold

a handful of this handful of this

uh has more microorganisms than the

number of people on this planet

so this is the living soil this is the

black hole

this is the one that you know needs to

be fed to the soil to grow our food

and uh all of us can compost

it is this so exciting to compost and it

is one of the best actions that we all

can take

every day because when you look at the

changes in the climate

we need to take action and every day we

can take an action

by composting our kitchen waste by

keeping away that sixty percent of the

waste that we generate

and converting into this amazing soil to

grow our food

food can be grown in the smallest spaces

that you have you can grow herbs you can

grow your tomatoes your chilis

you can start small again everything

as we learn we do as we learn and that’s

it so choice is a very powerful tool

and all of us can make the choice to

take a daily action

to make sure that we leave a better

planet for the future

there is a saying that we do not inherit

this planet but we

borrow it from the future and these

future generations that coming ahead of

us need to you know have something

uh worth living on this planet and we

can leave that better planet by taking

complete responsibility of the waste

that we generate

by recognizing it’s a great resource by

putting organic matter back into soil

and looking at a sustainable way of

living

it is putting less stress on the

resources and also

your regenerating soil so that’s a

win-win all the way

thank you