INTRODUCTION

Introduction
Solid waste is defined as the organic and inorganic waste
materials produced by different sources and havelost their
value in the eyes of their owner. It is estimated that the per
capita waste generated in India ia about 0.4-0.7Kg/day with
the compostable matter approximately 50-65%. Most cities in
developing countries have to contend with inefficient systems
of collection and processing of solid waste. Most common
practice of waste processing is uncontrolled dumping which
causes mainly water and soil pollution. Besides dumping or
sanitaryland filling, the final disposal of solid wastes can be
carried out by other methods like incineration and
composting. Earthworm farming (vermiculture) is another
bio-technique for converting the solid organic waste into
compost. Vermicompost is a high grade nutrient rich compost
of significant value as a bio fertilizer, soil conditioner and
facilitating the growth of the plants. Vermicomposting
facilities have already entered domestic and industrial
marketing in the countries like Canada, USA, Italy, Japan, etc.
Vermicomposting started at Ontario (Canada) only in 1970
and is now processing about 75 tones of refuse per week.
American earthworm company (AEC) began a farm in 1978-
1979 with about 500 tones capacity per month. Aoka Sangyo
Co. Ltd., Japan has three 1000 tons per month plants
processing wastes from pup and food industries. Beside these,
there are about 3000 other vermicomposting plants in Japan
with 5-50 tones capacity per month. It has also started in Italy
and in the Philippines. It is now time for India to think about
vermitechnology commercially. In India, approximately 134
kg/ha nutrients are removed every year from the soil due to
rising of different Crops. But the amount of input (N,P and K)
through chemical fertilizers is only 74 kg/ha.
Improper MSW disposal and management causes all
types of pollution: air, soil and water. Indiscriminate dumping
of wastes contaminates surface and ground water supplies. In
urban areas. MSW clogs drains. Creating stagnant water for
insect breeding and floods during rainy seasons. Uncontrolled
burning of MSW and improper incineration contributes
significantly urban air pollution. Greenhouse gases are
generated from the decomposition of organic wastes in
landfills and untreated leachate pollutes surrounding soil and
water bodies. Health and safety issues also arise from
improper MSW. Insect and rodent vectors are attracted to the
waste and spread diseases such as cholera and dengue fever.
Using water polluted by MSW for bathing, food, irrigation
and drinking water can also expose individuals to disease
organisms and other contaminants. The U.S. Public Health
Service identified 22 human diseases that are linked to
improper MSW. Waste workersand rag pickers in developing
countries are seldom protected from direct contact and injury
and the co-disposal of hazardous and medical wastes with
MSW poses serious health threat. Exhaust fumes from waste
collection vehicles, dust stemming form disposal practices and
the open burning of waste also contribute to overall health
problems. People know that poor sanitation affects their
health, especially in developing and low-income countries,
where the people are the most willing to pay for
environmental improvements (Rathi, 2006; Sharholy et al,
2005; Ray et al., 2005; Jha et al., 2003; Kansal, 2002; UDSU,
1999; Kansal et al., 1998; Singh et al., 1998; Gupta et al.,
1998; Tchobanoglous et al., 1993).
Solid waste management is one among the basic essential
services to be properly provided by municipal authorities in
the country to keep urban centres clean/ However. It is among
the most poorly rendered services and are at times
unscientific. Outdated and inefficient Waste is littered all over
leading to insanitary living conditions. Municipal laws
governing the urban local bodies do not have adequate
provisions to deal effectively with the ever growing problem
of solid waste management. With rapid urbanization, the
situation is becoming critical. The urban population has
grown fivefold in the last six decades with 285.35 million
people living in urban areas as per the 2001 census.
Quantum and nature of solid waste
Per capita waste generation ranges between 0.2 kg and
0.6 kg per day in the Indian cities amounting to about 1.15
lakh MT of waste per day and 42 million MT annually. Also,
as the city expands, average per capita waste generation
increases. Improper MSW disposal ad management causes all
types of pollution; air, soil and water. Indiscriminate
dumping of wastes contaminates surface and ground water
supplies. In urban areas, MSW clogs drains. Creating stagnant
water for insect breeding and floods during rainy seasons.
Uncontrolled burning of MSW and improper incineration
contributes significantly to urban air pollution. Greenhouse
gases are generated from the decomposition of organic wases
in landfills and untreated leachate pollutes surrounding soil
and water bodies. Health and safety issues also arise from
improper MSWM. Insect and rodent vectors are attracted to
the waste and can spread diseases such as cholera and dengue
fever. Using water polluted by MSW for bathing, food
irrigation and drinking water can also expose individuals to
disease organisms and other contaminants.
Types of solid waste:
Depending on their source the solid waste may of
different type such as
A.Municipal solid waste (MSW):
The term municipal solid waste is generally used to
describe most of the non-hazardous solid waste from a city,
town or village that requires routine collection and transport
to a processing or disposal site, sources of , MSW include
private homes, commercial establishments and institutions a
well as industrial facilities.
Municipal solid waste industry has four components:
 Recycling
 Composting
 Land – filling and
 Waste to energy via incineration.
The steps are generation, collection, sorting and separation,
transfer and disposal/utilization.
B. Hazardous waste:
Hazardous wastes are those that can cause harm to
human and the environment.
Characteristics of hazardous waste:
Waste are classified as hazardous if they exhibit any of
four primary characterises based on physical or chemical
properties of toxicity, reactivity, ignitability and corrosively.
Source of hazardous waste:
Chemical manufacturing companies, petroleum
refineries, paper mills, smelters and other industries. Plastic
industries thousands of chemicals are used in industries every
year.
Effects of hazardous waste:
 As the most of hazardous waste are disposed offin
land, the most serious environmental effect is
contaminated ground water.
 Exposure can occur through ingestion, inhalation
and skin can tact, resulting acute or chronic
poisoning.
Control of hazardous waste:
Common methods for disposing of hazardous waste are
land disposal and incineration.
C. Industrial waste:
These contain more of toxic components and require
special treatment.
Sources of industrial waste:
Food processing industries, metallurgical, chemical and
pharmaceutical units, breweries, sugar mills, paper and pulp
industries, fertilizer and pesticide industries are the major
ones which discharge toxic waste.
Effects of industrial waste:
Most common observation is that the health of the people
living in the neighbourhood of dumping sites is severely
affected.
Control of industrial waste:
Waste minimization technologies have to be developed.
Source reduction, recycling and reuse of materials need to be
practiced on a large scale. Land filling, incineration and
composting technologies could be followed.
D. Agricultural waste:
Sources of agricultural waste:
The waste generated by agriculture includes water from
crops and livestock. Some agro-based industries produce
waste are rice husk, degasses, ground nut shell, maize cobs,
straw of cereals etc.
Effects of agricultural waste:
If more C: N ratio waste like paddy husk or straw may
cause immobilization of nutrients if applied onto the fields.
Management of agricultural waste:
1. Waste to energy: Gasification, Pyrolysis
2. Biogas production
3. Agricultural waste like cobs, paddy husk, bagasse of
sugarcane could be subjected for composting.
E. Biomedical waste:
Biomedical waste means any waste, which is generated
during the diagnosis, treatment or immunization of human
beings or animals or in research activities pertaining thereto or
in the production or testing of biological samples.
F. Waste minimization:
Waste production can be minimized by adopting the
3R’S principle: Reduce, Reuse and Recycle.
Reduce (waste prevention):
Waste prevention, or “source reduction” means
consuming and discarding less is a successful method of
reducing waste generate.
Reuse:
Reuse is the process, which involves reusing items by
repairing them, donating them to charity and community
groups or selling there.
Recycling:
The process of recycling, including composting has
diverted several million tons of material away from disposal.
Causes of solid waste pollution:
Causes of solid waste pollution are pollutants form
households, Industrial units, manufacturing units, commercial
establishment, landfills, Hospitals and medical clinics. The
pollutants from these places may be in the form of non-
biodegradable matter or non-compostable degradable matter.
Causes of increase in solid waste:
 Population growth
 Increase in industrial manufacturing units
 Urbanization
 Modernization
Modernization, technological advancement and increase in
global population has created an increase in demand for food
and other essentials. This has resulted an increase in the
amount of waste being generated daily by each household.
Harmful effects:
Serious health problems are caused by the disposal of
various types of solid waste emanated from different sources.
The garbage becomes breeding grounds for disease-carrying
vectors such as files, mosquitoes, rats and cockroach. This
type of dumping allows biodegradable materials to
decompose under uncontrolled and unhygienic conditions.
This produces foul smell and breeds various types of insects
and infectious organisms besides spoiling the aesthetics of the
site. Industrial solid wastes are sources of toxic metals and
hazardous wastes, which may spread on land and can cause
changes in physicochemical and biological characteristics
thereby affecting productivity of soils. Toxic substances may
leach or percolate to contaminate the ground water.
In refuse mixing, the hazardous wastes are mixed with
garbage and other combustible wastes. This makes
segregation and disposal all the more difficult and risky.
Various types of wastes like cans, pesticides, cleaning
solvents, batteries ( zinc, lead or mercury ), radioactive
materials, plastics and e-waste are mixed up with paper,
scraps and other non-toxic materials which could be recycled.
Burning of some of these materials produces dioxins, furans
and polychlorinated biphenyls, which have the potential to
cause various types of ailments including cancer.
Treatment process:
 Wastes containing organic contaminants are
treated via chemical oxidation, a process that
breaks down the organic material.
 Hazardous debris streams are managed using
microencapsulation treatment technology. This
process reduces the leachability of hazardous
constituents so the material can be safely disposed
of in Landfill.
1. Landfill:
This approach is used to treat solid waste like
garbage and the solids remaining after waste treatment.
The waste is used for landfill in which a natural or man-made
pit or hallow is filled with the waste, covered with soil and
often landscaped. This site of landfill is carefully selected to
avoid subsequent problems; it is highly desirable that landfills
are located in an unused area or a derelict land. The waste is
collected and may be pre-treated in some way before being
placed in the pit.

Pre-treatment:
 Sorting of the wastes
 Mechanical pulverization or
 Incineration.
The landfill practice may be divided into two classes on the
basis of the type of pit used.
 Cell emplacement and
 Trench method or “cut and fill” method.
Cell emplacement method:
In this method, 2.5m deep cells of suitable size are
excavated at the site of landfill. Normally their size dependson
the amount of garbage to be dumped each day. Every day the
waste dumped in the cell is compacted and covered with about
20 cm deep layer of soil. The cells may be designed to be
single or multi layered.
Trench method:
In this method, long trench are dung filled with waste
and covered with soil. In both cell emplacement and trench
 methods the soil for covering the waste is dug from the site of
the next trench/cell.
Uses of landfill sites:
Landfill sites can be useful in the following two ways:
 As a source of biogas and
 For reclamation of abandonedsites to develop
landscaped garden etc.
Hazardous of landfill:
The disposal of waste in landfills presents several
hazards including:
 Fires in the waste materials,
 Increase in the population of disease vectors
like flies
 Offensive odours.
 Methane leakage and
 Leaching of toxic and corrosive materials into
surface and underground water.
2.Composting
Composting is a self-heating, substrate-dense, managed
microbial system and one solid-phase biological treatment
technology. Microbial growth is affected by moisture, pH,
organic nutrients and particle size. Composting can be done in
open system. i.e., land treatment and in closed system. The
open land system can be inexpensive treatment method but
the temperature fluctuates from summer to winter which
needs proper maintenance.
Process of composting:
As composting is a solid- phase biological treatment,
target compounds must be either solid or a liquid associate
with a solid matrix.
3.Vermicomposting:
Vermicomposting is the phenomenon of compost
formation by earthworm obviously. Earthworm play an
important role in the cycling of plant nutrients, turnover of
organic matter and maintenance of soil structure. The
earthworm can consume 10-20 percent of their own biomass
per dy. The most significance effect of earthworms in agro
ecosystem is the increase n nutrient cycling, particularly
nitrogen. They ingest organic matter with a relatively wide C:
N ratio. Thus, they affect physico chemical properties of soil.
Some of the known and potential waste decomposer
earthworms may be introduced in such places where they are
absent.
Earthworm:
Earthworms can produce more compost, in a shorter
time, than any other method. Worm casting (the odourless
excrement of the earth worm) in the soil are five times as rich
in available nitrogen, seven times as rich in available
phosphorus, three times as rich in available magnesium, two
times as rich in available carbon, one and one halftimes as
rich in available calcium and eleven times as rich in available
potassium as anything else in the upper six inches of soil. One
thousand earthworms and their descendants, under ideal
conditions, could convert approximately one ton of organic
waste into high yield fertilizer in one year. However, the
importance of earthworms is not a very modern phenomenon.
The Ancient Greeks considered the earthworm to have an
important role in improving the quality o the soil. The Greek
philosopher Aristotle referred to worms as “the intestines of
the earth”.
Function of earthworm in soil:
 Their tunneling activity helps aerate the soil. The
channels they make as they move through the soil
allow rain to enter the soil more rapidly, reduce
water runoff and reduce the potential for erosion.
This also helps improve soil structure by creating a
loose soil that is easily penetrated y roots.
 Earthworms neutralize soil pH. Their castings are
always closer to neutral than the original soil. The
pH in acidic soil is lifted and the pH in alkaline soils
is reduced.
 Earthworms gradually deepen the topsoil layer by
burrowing into the sub-soil and translocating fine
mineral particles to the surface in the form of
castings.
 Earthworms solve waste problems by composting
organic matter. Composting with worms occurs four
times faster than normal composting.
 High earthworm populations contribute to
biological pest control as soils with earthworms has
been shown to have far fewer parasitic nematodes
 than soil without earthworms. Many other soil borne
diseases also appear to be reduced.
 Earthworm castings are a sterile, odourless means to
condition your soil and an organic and natural way
to provide your plant with the nutrients they need.
 Earthworms have an immense impact on the soil, its
texture, its fertility and its ability to support
everything that lives in or on it, especially plants
that form the basis of our food supply.
 Animal manures are an important food source for
earthworms. They eat living organisms such as
nematodes, protozoans, bacteria and fungi in soil.
Worms will also feed on the decomposing remains
of other animals.
 The fertility of a soil can be defined as its capacity
to produce crops and is dependent on many
physical, chemical and biological properties of the
soil. Earthworms can play a significant role in
Enhancing soil fertility and plant productivity in a
number of direct and indirect ways.
 Earthworm activity can enhance soil nutrient
cycling, the activity of other beneficial soil
organisms and soil physical properties, such as soil
structure and tillage. Since farming can an involve
many soil disturbing activities, understanding the
biology and ecology of earthworms and other soil
biota can help inform management decisions that
may impact soil biota and crop performance.
  One thousand earthworms and their descendants,
under ideals conditions, could convert
approximately one ton of organic waste into high
yield fertilizer in one year.
Classification of earthworms:
Earthworms are classified into three types depending
upon their ability to burrow.
Epigenic
Epigenic earthworms cannot make burrows in the soil
strata. They can only move through the services of the
surface. E.g. Perionyx excavates, Eiseniafoetida,
Eudrilluseuginiae. Epigeics (surface feeders) are important for
the vermicomposting of different wastes. The epigeics such as
Eiseniafoetida and Eudrilluseugeniae are exotic worms and
Perionyx excavates is a native one being used for
vermicompost in India.
Endogenic
Endogenic are subsoil dwellers found in the deeper
region of the soil e.g.; Metaphireposthuma
Anecic
Anecic earthworms are found in soil which are not
frequently distributed e.g.; Lumbricusterrestri
Feed stock
Red earthworms will eat most forms of kitchen vegetable
or fruit waste, in addition to tea leaves, tea bags,
Coffee grounds, paper and shredded green garden wastes.
Materials to be avoided in significant quantities include meat,
dairy products, eggs, oily foods, salt and vinegar. Red
earthworms are found to eat their own weight very day. These
weights include their bedding, so every kilo of worms or part
therefore, may be fed 50% to 100% of their combined weight
in food or green waste. Bioconversion of vegetable waste into
value added products enhances their utilization for
environmental sustainability.
Earthworm anatomy:
Among the most familiar invertebrate animals are the
earthworms, members of the phylumAnnelida. The word
annelid means “ringed” and refers to a series of rings or
segments that make up the bodies of the members of this
phylum. There may be moiré than 100 segments in an adult
worm. Theclitellum is a swelling of the body found in
sexually mature worms and is active in the formation of an
egg capule, or cocoon. Eggs are produced in the ovaries and
pass out of the body through female genital pores. Sperm are
produced in the testes and pass out through tiny male genital
pores. During mating, sperm from one worm travel along the
sperm grooves to the seminal receptacles of another worm.
Fertilization of the eggs takes place outside the body as the
cocoon moves forward over the body, picking up the eggs of
one worm and the sperm of its mate. The pumping organs of
the circulatory system are five aortic arches. The earthworm
has no gills or lungs. Gases are exchanged between the
circulatory system and the environment through the moist
skin. The earthworm takes in a mixture of soil and organic
matter through its mouth, which is the beginning of the
digestive tract. The mixture enters the pharynx, which is
located in segments 1-6. The esophagus, in segments 6-13,
acts as a passageway between the pharynx and the crop. The
crop stores food temporarily. The mixture that the earthworm
ingests is ground up in the gizzard. Digestion and absorption
take place in the intestine, which extends over two-thirds of
the body length. Soil particles and undigested organic matter
pass out of the worm through the rectum and anus.
Vermicomposting:
Vermicomposting has in the recent years been adopted
over traditional composting, as a faster and environmentally
friendly method of creating organic fertilizer from organic
waste (Lazcanoet al., 2008). Traditional composting generally
relies on naturally occurring microbes and thermophilic
temperatures to decompose and stabilize organic waste. This
greatly slows the stabilization and maturation process during
composting together with loss of essential nitrogen as
ammonia during the thermophilic stage, thusreducing the
quality of the resultant organic fertilizer ( Lazcanoet al.,
2009). The earthworm species Eiseniafetida has been
observed to be most suited for vermicomposting due to its
wide tolerance to variations in composting environment
vermicomosting has in the recent years been adopted over
traditional composting, as a faster and environmentally
friendly method of creating organic fertilizer from organic
waste (Lazcanoet al., 2008). Traditional composting generally
relies on naturally occurring microbes and thermophilic
temperatures to decompose and stabilize organic waste. This
greatly slows the stabilization and maturation process during
composting together with loss of essential nitrogen as
ammonia during the thermophilic stage, thus reducing the
quality of the resultant organic fertilizer (Lazcanoet al., 2009).
The earthworm species Eiseniafetida has been observed to be
most suited for vermicomposting due to its wide tolerance to
variations in composting environment.
Vermicomposting is a practice of using worms to
breakdown organic material, including food scraps. The
resulting material is a mix of worm casting and decomposed
food scraps. The word “vermin” is Latin for worm. Worms
like top feed on slowly decomposing organic materials like
fruit and vegetables scraps. Worms produce castings that
contain beneficial breaking down food soap and can eat over
half their body weight in organic matter every day.
Five basic ingredients for vermicomposting
 Container
 Bedding
 Water
 Worms
 Non fatty kitchen scraps
Container:
The container depth should be between eight and twelve
inches. Bins need to be shallow because the worms feed in the
top layers of the bedding. A bin that is too as efficient and
could potentially become an odor problem. For a worm bin
out of plastic storage containers, ;never snap the lid shut tight.
The lid should be lay loosely on the bin.
Bedding:
The bedding for vermicomposting system must be able to
retain both moisture and while providing a place for the
worms to live. Bedding could be done using coconut shells,
gravels, stones, coir pith newspaper etc.,
Advantages of vermicomposting
Composting is a fundamental practice of organic
gardening. Biological decomposition reduces kitchen waste
and plant matter into a beneficial soil amendment while
lightening landfill loads vermicomposting tweaks the benefits
of traditional composting with the help of some unlikely
facilitarots- earthworms. Advantages of vermicomposting
include enriching soil, increasing harvest yields and
suppressing plant disease.
Enriching soil:
As a soil conditioner, vermicomposting is superior to
traditional compost for its ability to improve structure and
increase its water holding capacity.
Increase plant growth and yields:
Organic farmers values non synthetic fertilizers for their
minimal impact on local ecosystem. When these fertilizers
also produce faster plant growth and higher crop yields; Many
research revealed vermicomposting tea fertilizer yielded
dramatic plant growth rates and crop yielded dramatic plant
growth rates and crop yields of up to 50%.
Role of enzymes and microbes in vermicompost
Vermicomposting is a non-thermophilic, bio oxidative
process that involves earthworms and associated microbes.
These biological organic waste decomposition processes yield
the vermicompost. Vermicompost is a finely divided, peat like
material with high porosity, good aeration, drainage, water
holding capacity, microbial activity and excellent nutrient
status and buffering capacity thereby resulting the required
physiochemical characters congenial for soil fertility and plant
growth. Vermicompost enhances soil biodiversity by
promoting the beneficial microbes which in turn enhances
plant growth directly by the production of plant growth-
regulating hormones and enzymes and indirectly by
controlling plant pathogens, nematodes and other pests,
thereby enhancing plant health and minimizing the yield loss.
Due to its innate biological, biochemical and physiochemical
properties, vermicompost may be used to promote sustainable
agriculture and also for the safe management of agricultural,
industrial, domestic and hospital waste which may be
otherwise pose serious threat to life and environment.
 The compost prepared from organic materials using
earthworm is of low cost and the technology is an eco-friendly
technology called vermicomposting. The fine granular peat-
like end product, vermicompost that is produced is reported to
contain elevated levels of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium
(NPK) in available form, micronutrients, micro flora, enzymes
and growth regulators. Because of this, the vermicompost
when applied or supplemented in soil improves crop growth
and yield. The earthworms, the drivers of many processes in
soil, apart from the know vermicomposting are also found to
enhance phytoextraction of metals from contaminated soils. In
addition, vermicompost is produced by the joint action of
earthworms and microbes and it contains nutrients in available
form with increased microbial activity. The use of
biofertilizers is nowadays known to bring out several benefits
to soil: solubilisation of essential minerals, get hold of
nutrients offering micronutrients in more utilizable from for
plants and taking part in biological nitrogen fixation.
Microorganisms which include Azospirillum, Azotobacter,
phosphobacteria, Rhizobia and Cyanobacteria. The PGPMs
are capable of putting forth advantageous properties on
growth and yield characteristics of several cultivable crops in
different parts of the world. Rhizosphre bacteria promote plant
growth by improving the availability of nutrients suppressing
the growth of plant pathogens or by production of such as
auxins.
Enzyme activities have been used widely as an index of
soil fertility or ecosystem status because they are involved in
the biological transformations of native and foreign
compounds in soils, (Tate, 2000). Several enzymatic activities
have been measured to describe organic matter
decompostition (Garcia et al, 1994, 1995; Benitez et al., 2002,
2005). Vermicomposting involves the bio-oxidation of
organic matter through the joint action of earthworms and
microorganisms.
The Transformation in physiochemical and biochemical
properties (Dominguez, 2004) and the short time in which
they can occur (Airaet al., 2002) make vermicomposting a
suitable system for studying microbe- earthworm interactions
(Airaet al., 2006c). Tate, 2000 stated that there is no
correlation between the enzyme activities, microbial biomass
and respiration and this may depend on the fact that enzymatic
activity is due to enzyme which may be in a living or dead
cell, cell debris, free enzymes and / or enzymes adsorbed by
clay or immobilized in humic complexes (Ceccanti and Garcia
1994; Alef and Nannipieri, 1995a; Nannipieri et al., 2002).
