Colaba Pumping Station Vermiculture Project

Clean Air Island has undertaken a large scale vermiculture project in southern Mumbai, based at the Colaba Pumping Station.

About 2000 square meters of land has been made available by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation to the Clean Air Island society, for vermiculture of 5 tons of waste a day. This has been divided into beds,one for each day and leveled with roads between the beds, vehicle shed etc. built by the BMC. Electricity and water connection are available and the Colaba Pumping Station has security arrangements. Clean Air Island has employed electric vehicles and a staff, including 1 mechanical supervisor, 1 vermiculture supervisor, 1 driver, 1 gardener and 2 workers, to transport waste and recycle it on a daily basis, through vermiculture by the use of deep burrowing earthworms.

The project was inaugurated by Municipal Commissioner Mr.V.Ranganathan, now Chief Secretary, on 16th October 2000. It has been progressively collecting and recycling vegetable waste of up to 4 tons daily from the Crawford, Shivaji, Fort and Colaba markets and from INS Aswini and other Naval establishments, since then. The project is one of the largest vermiculture projects in Mumbai for vermiculture of public waste and has been encouraged by the BMC as the 3 landfill areas at Deonar etc. outside Mumbai will soon reach saturation point. No other land is easily available.

Clean Air Island has initiated this project with assistance from HDFC to act as a catalyst for 9 more such projects in the first Clean Air Island between CST station and Colaba. These will then take care of all the 50 tons of public waste in this 10 square km. area. The operating cost of the project has resulted in a cost of Rs.1.04 per kg , thereby giving a saving of 59% against the BMC cost of Rs.2.5/kg for transporting waste to landfill areas. The project has been partly funded by the European Commission under its Asia Urbs programme, with the involvement of Ireland, UK and Mumbai under the project “ Environmental Services and Waste Management in a Social Economy Framework.”

The Colaba Pumping Station has become an example of successful implementation of large scale vermiculture. Since vermiculture began in 2000, several species of plants have been grown at Colaba and many have seeded themselves. This plants include: