Producing Black Gold

Focusing on generating organic fertilizer from kitchen waste in order to promote organic farming

We are primarily focusing on the problem of improper waste management in our community, which has been designated as the top priority to be reduced. We have implemented the project at one of Bangladesh's top tourist destinations  called the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) where more than 13 indigenous communities reside.   In recent years, a significant number of hotels and dining establishments have been constructed due to the city's growing local and tourist populations.As a result, a variety of wastes, including both cooked and uncooked kitchen waste, plastics, polyethylene, and household items, are combined together and put in the rubbish. These garbage then proceed to be piled up on top of hills surrounded by lush greenery without being properly managed. Mismanagement of the dumping system results in serious degradation of the local biodiversity as well as air, water, and soil contamination. Additionally, it severely harms the local population's environment and reduces their ability to lead healthy lives.

Our best course of action is to immediately adhere to the motto "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle." It focuses mostly on making organic fertilizer from discarded vegetable scraps. We focus primarily on waste from raw green vegetables and do not address other sources of waste. We personally collected numerous household items that can be utilized to quickly break down green garbage in a month and a half. In the initial step, we solely collect trash from restaurants, which we then dump into a huge barrel. Next, we begin layering the wastes for decomposition by adding soil, dried leaves, and green waste to another bottom-holed barrel. We repeat this process daily until the barrel is full.Every week, we continue to evaluate the layers and, if necessary, mix them up from top to bottom. We also continue to sprinkle water to speed up the breakdown process. We have to wait for a dark, humus-like substance for roughly 5–6 weeks. After that, we gather the garbage and dry it off using high heat or sunlight. This is the process's last step. We obtain genuine organic fertilizer by machine-grinding the dry waste into a powder form.

Our primary goal in making organic fertilizer is to encourage organic farming in indigenous communities of Chittagong Hill Tracts.   To enable our local indigenous farmers and gardeners to practice organic farming, we will sell and distribute our genuine product to them. By doing this, the previously enormous amount of chemical fertilizers will gradually reduce over time. The organic fertilizer is affordable, environmentally friendly, and will simultaneously decrease the amount of harmful chemicals in foods and raise their nutritional value. Last but not least, farmers will gain from employing inexpensive organic fertilizer, and food waste can be recycled to reduce waste mismanagement and modify locals' lifestyles.

Our team has 5 members and we belongs to 'Marma' indigenous community form Chittagong Hill Tracks,Bangladesh. We can say that our dynamic team is well-positioned to deliver this solution because all of us are involved with several youth organizations and volunteering works. Our team’s life, volunteer, and work experiences are individually given below – 

1. Ushing Mya Marma: Currently pursuing BA Honors Final year in English Literature at Bandarban Govt. College. Team leader of "Green Milieu" one of the winning team of 'Bangladesh Youth Challenge 2022 Bootcamp Chittagong Division- sponsored by Generation Unlimited and UNICEF'. Also working as a Role Model of Gender Responsive Education and Skills Program (GRESP, BRAC). Beside this involved with Bangladesh Marma Students Council (BMSC) as Joint Secretary, Bandarban District Committee. Volunteering at Chaloong (Indigenous Community based organization), Campus Representative at Desperately Seeking Bandarban.

1. Puchainu Marma : Currently pursuing Masters degree in Bangla literature at Jagannath University. Co founder of “Green milieu”. Program manager at HMUN organization (youth organization) content writer at chaloong foundation (indigenous community based organization) campus representative at Desperately Seeking Bandarban. 

1. Chaw way : Chaw Way Hai(team member Green Milieu) pursuing under graduation in Botany from University Of Chittagong. Volunteering 'Chaloong' online based media of ' Indigenous culture of Bangladesh' and volunteering Hill Model United Nation.

1. Dawki prue: Dawki Marma (Team member of Green Milieu) Currently pursuing Under Graduation in Zoology from Hazi Mohammad Mohsin College. Volunteering Chaloong and assistant manager of HMUN (youth organisation)

1.  Mipru Marma is currently studying at Asian University for women. Team member “Green Milieu”. She is a recipient of “The Millennium Fellowship”, which is a semester-long leadership development program by the  United Nations Academic Impact. She is actively engaged in indigenous education development and raising awareness among young adolescents on menstrual hygiene and using eco friendly sanitary napkins.  

Before initiating our project we surveyed various local places to take feedback from farmers, vendors about the present marketing situation of chemical fertilizers and the result we got was very negative. So we potentially believe our work will turn out to be positive. During the incubation period, we organized a seminar with a few enthusiastic youths and presented our project processing and implementation. We shared our knowledge about recycling waste and they were very delighted and gathered much information. We ran our project by ourselves and we encouraged some volunteers to work with us

We are conducting our project work in a region where there is a knowledge gap regarding the recycling of food waste. They aren't even aware that filthy waste materials can be used to create organic fertilizer. To raise awareness among the local population, we have set up the project in our area. Therefore, in our community, this can be regarded as an inventive answer.

At first, we are just working with a few restaurants, which culminates in hundreds of kilograms of waste being converted into 10 kilograms of organic fertilizer per day. Cleaning up food waste is being done through these actions, which not only help with waste management but also enhance the environment. Additionally, we intend to set up a sizable manufacturing facility to create fertilizer in big quantities. So, our goal is to completely recycle the waste management issue while developing a location for the production of organic fertilizer that is good to the environment.

We don't implement our project activities using a lot of advanced equipment. We currently use basic manual tools like buckets, gardening tools, and barrels when working. But shortly, we'll be making changes to our machinery, such as a giant grinding machine and a rolling barrel that can be spun horizontally 360 degrees. We intend to create a piece of software that will encourage individuals to recycle their food scraps.

We have already produced our desired product but we are yet to distribute it to our targeted farmers and gardeners. Initially we will approach to a number of 10 farmers to use and examine our products as a trial. We estimate to increase the consumers to 100 by next year. 

Though the raw materials of our project is unlimited source of green vegetable waste, we are facing problems in building up modified equipment. This is due to the financial shortage as we are working on this project with a seed fund that we won from the Bootcamp challenge held in Bangladesh. Currently we are facing problems in packaging our manufactured fertilizers. We are unable to do this work as there is no packaging factory in our city. 

We have collaborated with ‘Chaloong organization’ . Chaloong organization works to save the folk art, folk culture and language of the indigenous communities in Bandarban. Chaloong is currently working as our media partner. We are also collaborated with HMUN, a youth organization in Chittagong Hill Tracts. These organizations promote our work through social media and seminar. Recently DRIK organization joined us and made a video of our work in documentary form.

Our business model is social enterprise. As the number of poor people in our indigenous community is economically unstable so we choose this type of business model. Where we sell our organic fertilizer to farmers at a comparatively low price and give a portion of the profit to charity funds. We spend most of our charity money on skill development programs for indigenous youths. On one hand, farmers are able to grow good yields, on the other hand, soil fertility is increasing which is good for our nature and at the same time youth are also transformed into skilled. We mainly sell organic fertilizer to famers and do social work. Farmers are desperate for our organic fertilizer because they have been using chemical fertilizers in their soil for a long time, the fertility of the soil is decreasing day by day, the yield is not as before, so they need our organic fertilizer to increase the yield as before. 

We started this project with funding from Generation Unlimited. We are still working with the provided money. Furthermore, we have presented our product and work to some of our local NGOs and they really appreciated our work and wants to invest a little in our project. We have an upcoming competition in national stage to pitch our project in front of few investors. We hope we will get the chance to approach the investors. In addition, the products that we have already made can be the source of revenue streams to contribute a little to the continuity of our activities.