Madurai City Corporation has launched a green initiative in which major Hotels will recycle their waste and use the manure to cultivate vegetables to be used by them – one of the first such initiatives in the country.
K Thirupathi, managing director, K T Greens said that it was in 2015 that he had decided to recycle the wastes generated by the hotels in the city, as the clean India movement was given a push throughout the country. People were asked to segregate their waste and also implement solid waste management units on their premises.
Initially, only three hotels in the city came forward to handover their waste to the initiative. The compost and recycling yard was set up in the 2.5 acre land off the Madurai-Melur highway on the outskirts of the city behind the Madurai bench of the Madras high court.
The results in the pilot project led to 30 major hotels coming forward to join the project, and the Madurai Corporation came forward to offer land to the company and the Madurai District Hotel Owners Association agreed to go ahead with their project.
The composting yard project, called the ‘smart, clean, green, Madurai’ was established at a cost of Rs 55lakh, in 5.5 acres of land belonging to the Madurai Corporation.
Fitted with a high tech accelerated composting machine, the vegetable wastes are collected by the composting yard, using their own vehicles on a daily basis. The hotels have to pay Rs 6,000 a day for waste management. “They get organic vegetables in return.”
Every 100 kilograms of waste will produce 15 kilograms to 18 kilograms of manure. This manure sold as well as used to produce 15 varieties of fruits and vegetables which will be purely organic. Now, the yard process 10 tonnes a day.