Turning Kitchen Waste to Black Gold with Ritu Malhan (vegan), Part 1 of 2

Today, we will meet Ritu Malhan (vegan), a teacher hailing from the peaceful nation of India. Ritu has initiated a program called “Waste to Gold,” wherein she educates people on making compost and growing their food. Thanks to Ritu's efforts, more than 1,000 individuals are gardening on balconies or terraces. She is also dedicated to living sustainably to help heal and safeguard our planet. Ritu’s Waste to Gold program teaches individuals how to turn kitchen scraps into compost, which can be used to grow vegetables and fruits.

There are several ways to compost kitchen and garden waste. Ritu explains the process for aerobic composting, which is simple and cheap. “So, this is my kitchen waste: tea leaves, radish peels, onion peels, and all. Now, I’m going to explain your journey from here to black gold. So, this is what you are going to receive after two to three months. This soil-like thing will be black gold, which you will be making from this kitchen waste. So, as far as dry waste is concerned, you can use the old one, old decomposed compost. This is rice husk. So this makes soil mix fluffy also, airy also. So aeration improves with this, or this sawdust. And another option for it is coco peat. This is the powder. So here I have mixed something, but pure coco peat powder you can use, and then one more thing that you get free of cost from nature is dry leaves. You can see these in every park and in every backyard garden.”

“And if you have small accommodation, then another option I’ll give you is basket composting.” Let’s watch Ritu explain how to use the pitcher as a composter, which she showed us earlier. “The simple formula you need to keep in mind is: dry and wet waste. So, this is how you can make layers. After this, you can cover it with any cotton cloth so that flies do not breed over there. So, this is how composting will be done. After every three-four days, you can shake this. So, when you shake, it will receive fresh air supply and all these microbes here in this pot are aerobic bacteria. If you maintain balance, there will be no smell.”