No land for best option: composting

Thiruvananthapuram, the capital city of Kerala, does not have a municipal waste-treatment facility. Its only plant to treat solid waste, located …

India’s cleanest cities: Mysuru’s sophisticated decentralised wet waste-to-compost system

Composting at household-level ensures kitchen waste can be converted into useful resource

COVID-19 lockdown a good time to compost your waste. Here's how to do it

Home composting can shed load off workers. About 50-70% of Indian households generate waste that is organic in nature 

Do you want to cut your Carbon footprint after death?

Recompose offers human composting, or natural organic reduction as a greener alternative to burial, cremation

All that crap: How can faecal sludge be reused

If more people in India’s rural areas are building septic tanks, there must be effective ways of managing faecal sludge. Here are some ways …

CSE clean city award: Why Alappuzha is one of the cleanest cities in India

Alappuzha has an excellent waste disposal system. It relies on decentralised biogas plants and composting to take care of 80 per cent of its waste.…

Solving India's garbage problem

Segregation at source should be at the heart of municipalities’ solid waste management system

These farmers use paddy straw for income

Instead of burning paddy straw, farmers in Haryana's Panipat district are using it to farm mushrooms. This has eased pollution, too

Earthworms are more important than pandas (if you want to save the planet)

We focus on large, charismatic animals at the expense of these crucial "lowly creatures"

Zero waste systems can create thousands of jobs across world: Study

Reuse creates over 200 times as many jobs as landfills and incinerators; recycling around 70 times more 

States commit to waste segregation at source, but decentralisation not yet a priority

Decentralised solutions will cut transportation costs and make households and institutions part of the solution

‘Compostable’ not ‘Recyclable’ is the only way out

We all compost at the end of life. Let us learn from what is all around us and adapt our choices so that we can continue to survive and thrive

Make wealth from waste

Residential societies can set up their own composting plants to tackle biodegradable waste profitably

Desert healer

Ruhi Kandhari travels to a cold desert in Himachal Pradesh to see how a former bureaucrat is greening it

‘Compost too needs subsidy’

Agriculture scientist Preeti Joshi  has the recipe for the perfect compost and has been promoting it in Wardha district of Maharashtra for …

Where will segregated waste go? Cities are clueless

A country-wide waste segregation campaign also needs to be backed up by a plan for treatment and processing

Urban shit: where does it all go?

India is staring at a big sanitation crisis and needs to reinvent its excreta disposal mechanism

Not a waste until wasted

Punjab farmers burn straw after harvest. It is time to exploit the potential of this agro-waste

Lessons from two cities

Pune aims to become a zero-landfill city by 2015. With a range of solid waste management options, the target does not seem too ambitious. …

Wasted wealth

Organic composting is filthy business. Facilities flout norms, produce poor quality manure

Daily Court Digest: Major environment orders (November 22, 2023)

Down To Earth brings you the top environmental cases heard in the Supreme Court, the high courts and the National Green Tribunal  

At home with nature

Terrace, windowsills are a great space to nurture birds, butterflies

What a waste

Solid waste management plant that won Kanpur an award raises a stink

Bagful of doubts

India has no fool-proof test for biodegradable plastic

Drowning in its own rubbish

For Thiruvananthapuram, the only way to manage waste is by flouting rules