Discarded veggies, fruits end up as 100% eco-friendly fertilizer

Waste from Carbon market, Cebu City’s oldest and biggest public market, ends up at the Inayawan dump site.

But a start-up company has found a way of using this waste – mostly discarded vegetables, fruits and other produce – for valuable organic fertilizer.

The year-old Bio Nutrient Solid Waste Management Inc. is processsing 100 tons of waste a week and turning the compost into an eco-friendly 100 percent bio-available fertilizer called “New Suryamin”.

Since they started producing organic fertilizer last March 31, Emma Ramas said they realized the problem is not about marketing the products, but how to cope with the demand.

“As much as 80 percent of the organic fertilizer market has not been filled,” she said.

Their fertilizer is being sold to sugarcane growers in northern Cebu. Field trials of the product are being made at the vegetable laboratory farm of the Cebu provincial government in Inayagan, Naga City.

In Davao city, they are field testing the product on cacao plants.

In 2011, Ramas, a member of the Permaculture group in Cebu, lived beside the commissary of a catering company. Instead of complaining about the smell, she established a starter Takakura compost.

(Koji Takakura, after whom the method is named, is a Japanese researcher who developed the composting method that speeds up the process to one day, instead of one or two weeks. The process which uses fermented bacteria agents, is odor-free.)

Ramas arranged to have the caterer’s biodegradable waste collected in a composting facility in barangay Lahug. Later when the volume could no longer be handled there, the facility was transferred to Inayawan, near the dumpsite.

She started selling the compost mostly to gardeners.

With P5 million in capital and the collaboration of an Indian company, Prathista Industries Ltd., she set up the company, Bio-nutrients.

Most of the 100 tons of waste handled weekly comes from Carbon market.

Although the waste is partially segregated at the source, with only 5 percent plastic, half of the work is sorting out and getting rid of non-biodegradable materials.

The benefits to farmers is great.

Unlike its synthetic counterpart, organic fertilizers nourishes both the plants and the soil, said Ramas. Over time, less fertilizer is needed as the soil’s bio-mass is recovered.

“Our fertilizer has enough macro nutrients (nitrogen, potassium and phosphorous or NPK) to sustain the plants. It also has enough micro nutrients for the soil like selenium, boron and other substances needed by the soil,” she said.

A Cebu city ordinance requires residents to segregate wastes at home so that biodegradable matter like food scraps, grass clippings, and leaves are collected and disposed of separate from bottles, plastic and other items that won’t decompose.

Implementation at the household level still leaves much to be desired but the practice makes it easier for scavengers and recyclers to sort out at the dumpsite.

“It has reduced segregation time by our workers in Inayawan by as much as 50 percent since the policy was implemented,” Ramas said.

SMALL DENT

The service of the start-up company makes a small dent in the city’s total volume of garbage.
At present, Cebu Ciy produces 500 tons of solid waste a day. About half of the volume is biodegradable.

The new company can process 40 tons a day or about 300 tons a week in its Inayawan plant.
Torres suggested setting up smaller organic fertilizer plants around the city, nearer sources of solid wastes.

“Maybe we can cluster the city into five areas, and have these facilities in these clusters,” Ramas said

Sol Torres, a member of the Movement for Livable Cebu (MLC), said the organic fertilizer plant of Ramas is a big help to Cebu City.

“If this initiative is replicated, we can save millions of pesos from our annual budget. Imagine, Cebu City is spending P1, 400 (as tipping fee) for every truck of garbage brought to Consolacion town. If we multiply this amount by the number of trucks a day, a month and a year, how much money can be saved? Then the money could be allocated for more important needs such as health, education, infrastructure, housing and many more.”

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