Compost Karigars are the valuable workforce in the community who help in creating good quality compost and are able to manage the day to day activity of community level composting.
Skilled compost karigars are very essential for successful in-situ composting. They help the apartment to manage the organic waste which is 60%-70% of the total waste, by converting it into a useful resource like compost, or black gold as we call it.
We at SWMRT have always promoted decentralized composting at every level to manage the kitchen waste starting with our Swachagraha campaign in 2016. Over the years we are glad to see many good composting solutions in the market and apartments have a wide range of options to choose from.
About the Compost Karigar Campaign
In October 2022, we initiated a fund raising campaign on Give India called 'Dignity of Livelihoods' to raise funds to acknowledge the compost karigars from the apartments. In December 2022, we invited apartments in Bengaluru who are doing in-situ composting to nominate their Compost Karigars for this campaign. We received a fantastic response from 21 communities across Bangalore, representing almost 7000 households. A huge shout out to all those who sent in nominations and congratulations that you are doing in-situ composting.
These nominations were shared with our esteemed jury members: Dr Umashankar, Valli Srinivasan and Padmashree Mahesh. They shortlisted 9 communities to the next level.
The jury members then visited the 9 communities, observed the process of composting, quality of compost and interacted with the karigars. And after a lot of deliberations and discussions, selected these 6 communities as winners of this edition.
On March 4th, 2023 we organized the Compost Karigar felicitation 'Swacha Sambhrama' program at Swachagraha Kalika Kendra. The chief guests for the program were Mr Srinivasulu IFS (Member Secretary , KSPCB) Mr Anselm Rosario (Director - Biowise Horticultural Products). Special Invitee was Mr Krishnamurthy (BBMP, JC Bommanahalli Zone). The winning apartment representatives, their karigar teams participated in full strength. The karigars were felicitated with a cash prize, a certificate and a cloth bag filled with fresh fruits and vegetables.
Thanks to Saahas NGO for giving us the cloth bags stitched with repurposed cloth and to farm fresh , Bangalore for the organic fruits and vegetables.
The HSR BBMP team, the Kalika Kendra BBMP and SWMRT staff, and the Samvada Baduku interns were also felicitated for their admirable work during the program with a small token of appreciation. Here a few clicks from the event.
The program included a few cultural items by the Samvada interns and it concluded with feeding the soil with compost produced at Kalika Kendra. This event is just the beginning and it will be our endeavour to create more compost karigars through our skilling program, to be launched in the coming months. Keep following our social media handles for updates on this and our other activities.
This blog is by Anuradha Govind (Member SWMRT)