Sustainable Campus Approach: A Case Study of Sharda University Composting Plant

Abstract

Actual meaning of education is not just only narration but its ground application. Any organization with fooding and lodging facility produces some amount of food and vegetable waste on a daily basis. In general a malpractice of disposing food and vegetable waste with municipal solid waste & further opting incineration and landfilling method is both uneconomical and non-environment friendly hence in-house composting system can be the most suitable alternative to this malpractice. This study was conducted to showcase and investigate the working of composting plant present at prestigious Sharda University campus. The study was conducted in a one cubic meter composting pit in which the food and vegetable waste collected from campus itself almost weighing 38.6 kg were used in the composting process for a time period of 21 days. Apart from temperature which was noted regularly, all the essential parameters of the composting process were analyzed after fixed interval of 7 days. It was found that the temperature reached the thermophilic phase after 5 days of composting period. pH reached the basic range of 8.5. Similarly, all other parameters like EC, moisture content, Carbon content, nitrogen content etc. were all analyzed and their contribution to efficiency of the composting process as well as remedial approach towards betterment of composting plant was illustrated.

Keywords: Leachate, Mesophilic, Methanogenesis, Segregation, Shredding, Thermophilic.

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