Marketing of organic manure from city garbage is becoming a serious business, with even chemical fertiliser companies increasingly incorporating it in their product portfolio.

Take Coromandel International Ltd (CIL), which annually sells around 35 lakh tonnes (lt) of fertilisers mainly di-ammonium phosphate (DAP) and complexes.

In 2010-11, CIL also marketed 50,000 tonnes of compost produced from municipal solid wastes (MSW), which it plans to more than double to 1.1 lt this year. That, at Rs 5/kg, would be worth Rs 50 crore – a fraction of the company's Rs 8,000-crore operational revenues. But it is a business growing by over 20 per cent a year, noted Dr G. Ravi Prasad, President (Marketing), CIL.

Besides CIL, Nagarjuna Fertilisers & Chemicals, Zuari Industries, FACT, Kribhco and National Fertilisers Ltd are also selling MSW-based compost, though the quantities they are doing are only a few thousand tonnes each.

Garbage potential

Moreover, none of the fertiliser concerns, including CIL, are manufacturing the compost themselves. The ones doing it are the likes of IL&FS Environmental Infrastructure & Services Ltd (IEISL), Hanjer Biotech Energies, Ramky Enviro Engineers and A2Z Infrastructure Pvt Ltd.

Mr Mahesh Babu, Managing Director of IEISL, estimates India's total MSW-based compost production now at 2.5 lt. The potential is much larger, given the roughly 500 lt of MSW generated annually by the cities and towns here. That works out to 140,000 tonnes a day (tpd), with Delhi and Mumbai alone contributing 9,000 tpd each, Chennai and Kolkata 5,000-6,000 tpd, and Bangalore and Hyderabad 4,000-5,000 tpd.

“From every 100 tonnes of MSW, 15-20 tonnes of compost can be made. So, from the entire 500 lt, you can get about 80 lt. And this will only go up with further urbanisation,” Mr Babu pointed out.

IEISL operates composting units at Delhi, Jalandhar, Mysore, Kozhikode, Erode, Pollachi, Mettupalayam, Udumalpet and Coonoor that can together process 1,480 tpd of MSW. By this fiscal-end, it aims to add another 900 tpd through new facilities at Jaipur and Tiruchi and expanding its 200-tpd plant at Delhi to 500 tpd (A2Z Infrastructure has the country's single biggest facility of 1,800 tpd at Kanpur, followed by Hanjer Biotech's 800-tpd unit at Nagpur).

Unique Selling Proposition

The composting firms receive the raw garbage free of cost from municipal authorities, which they process, bag and sell either to fertiliser companies or under their own brands (such as IEISL's “Harit Lehar”). The processing cost comes to about Rs 1.80/kg, with bagging and transport adding another Rs 1.30 or so.

The nitrogen (N), phosphorous (P) and potash (K) content in MSW-based compost typically ranges between 0.5 and 1.5 per cent each. These are way below the levels in urea (46 per cent N), DAP (18 per cent N and 46 per cent P) or muriate of potash (60 per cent K). But the USP of compost – which fertiliser firms are seeking to project – is its OC (organic carbon) content of over 12 per cent.

“Indian soils have very low OC, which is due to their being farmed continuously and the depleted carbon not getting refurbished through green manuring or putting back crop residues. By adding compost, not only would the OC in their soils go up, but farmers will also see a dramatic improvement in the nutrient use efficiency of the chemical fertilisers applied by them.

To that extent, they can probably reduce urea or DAP consumption,” said Dr Prasad.

Soils with higher OC also have higher water-holding capacity, while exhibiting greater porosity and tilth. “Groundnut seedlings will wilt within six days if there are no rains, whereas in compost-treated soils, they can last for 12 days.

The plants also show better root development and tillering,” he added.

IEISL, similarly, claims that farmers near Agra in Uttar Pradesh have increased per-acre yields of wheat from 16 to 21 quintals by using its compost along with regular fertilisers.

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