BY PRODUCING BLACK GOLD, SAVE THE EARTH

Web Site: http://www.fenbilimleriokullari.k12.tr/Proje/Default.aspx

Istanbul is the world’s 18 ^th biggest city which has population of 13,854,740. Its population density is 2,392/km. The city is the center of industry, economy and tourism. That’s why daily waste production stated by municipality, is 8200 ton/day.

As the global population grew, the quantities and nuisance value of wastes increased. Therefore, society now has large volumes of waste to deal with. Industrialization influences both the composition and quantity of waste generated by societies. In Istanbul there are 5 garbage dumps and 1486 times a day, 114 garbage trucks empty their waste to the garbage dumps. It causes huge amounts of carbon dioxide emission which causes global warming besides other environmental impacts.

It should not be forgotten that we are going to be the future owners of the world, so we should try to find out environmental friendly solutions to nowadays environmental problems.

We aimed to recycle the organic waste, to have contribution to the nature and the economy of the country. In Turkey only the 1.1% of organic wastes can be composted. In our school district municipality, Environmental Protection Department said that; “The amount of daily total waste collected by Kartal Municipality is 422,14 tons which includes 194,39 tons of the organic waste.”

We gave questionnaire to 100 people living in our district and learnt that although the consciousness work about the recycling is done immensely, the public is not used to doing it. In the cities which are highly populated, the organic waste is stored in the garbage collection areas and cannot be recycled to the nature. For example in Kartal, total collected waste amount is 75985,31 tons between 2012 January-June. In the municipality the organic waste is stored in the garbage collection areas but cannot be recycled fully. The yearly fertilizer expense of the municipality is 126,455 Turkish Liras (53,299 Euros). When the recycling of the organic waste is provided, the productive fertilizer will be able to be used in the parks and gardens of the municipality.

After meeting held with Head of Municipality Mr. Altınok Öz   they decided to take an action to compost organic wastes. According to the protocol which we have signed with the municipality, the organic waste of the public bazaars started to be recycled by vermicomposting. Garbage collection cost of the municipalities will be decreased more or less 40 % due to the recycling of the organic waste of the schools and houses.

The meaning of “vermicomposting” is to recycle organic waste by the help of earth worms.

Can you imagine that all the habitants have been started vermicomposting in their kitchen, how much money can we save? We can give an astonishing answer that 100,000 Euros will be saved by only Kartal Municipality. By knowing this, to increase awareness of vermicomposting, with two municipalities in our region, we have had training sessions about recycling organic waste at schools, organic markets and blocks of apartments for five months and will be continuing to do this. After our trainings one of the habitant says that; “From now on I will not throw any organic waste from my kitchen and I will produce my own fertilizer and produce organic vegetables in my balcony” How to convert the organic waste from the kitchen and cafeteria of the flats and schools into the fertilizer with the warms, were told in the training sessions.

Two municipalities have been started to produce Red worm by our guidance. Until now 10 schools has been already informed. With our guidance the organic waste was started to be recycled at 5 schools’ garden. Especially science teachers of visited schools were ambitious to get involved in the project. They started vermicomposting studies both in their science laboratories and at their gardens.  The presentations which are given with the co-operation of the municipalities, will be continued in 142 schools and by February 2013 the organic waste from the local markets has been started to be recycled.