Himalayan News Service

Kathmandu, March 21:

The Kathmandu Metropolitan City today started producing organic fertiliser at its vermicompost plant at Teku from the organic waste produced in the City with the use of a special kind of earthworms. The KMC brought around 40,000 such earthworms to manage the garbage in an environment-friendly way. The earthworms, Eisenia foetida, are believed to convert around 500 kg of organic solid waste into 200 kg of quality organic manure every day. Use of earthworms in organic waste management has been traditionally in use at the household level. The use of earthworms to decompose organic matters is called vermiculture while the compost thus obtained is called vermicompost.

This is the first time the KMC has used the technique at a large scale to manage the City’s organic waste, according to Shriju Pradhan, coordinator of Community Mobilisation Unit of the KMC. About 200,000 earthworm species have been found so far which have the capacity to decompose organic wastes and convert them into fertiliser. Pradhan said the use of this special kind of earthworms in managing organic waste has become popular as these worms reproduce very fast and they don’t leave bad odour. “Besides, production and sale of earthworms can itself be used as an independent business,” Pradhan added. Ananda Shova Tamrakar, the chief of Pesticide Monitor Nepal, which has been promoting vermiculture for the past nine years, said earthworms decompose the waste twice as fast as conventional composting and give the output eight to 10 times better in quality. Chief executive officer at the KMC, Surya Prasad Silwal, said the method could prove a model for the whole capital’s waste management and it would solve the mounting garbage problem to some extent.