CASE STUDY 1

Millennium School in Pune, Maharashtra has developed a vegetable garden for its students using canteen waste and dry leaves. They cultivate all kinds of vegetables, fruits in this garden. An organisation nearby has a lot of leaf litter. I suggested them the model of partial compost and donation. Surplus leaf litter was collected by school from them and from a few other sources. The vegetable garden till now has utilized 20 tons of dry leaves which otherwise would have been burnt. Mulching is the process of crushing leaves and spreading in the plant bed. Because of this layer, soil retains moisture and water gets conserved. This vegetable garden has conserved around 80% of water due to dry leaf mulching.

CASE STUDY 2

A society in Pune create compost using only dry leaves. There are many large trees in this society. Yet, they do not burn or throw away the leaves. Instead they compost them and harvest around 20 tons of compost every year.

They are doing it successfully for last 7 years. They earned a profit of Rs. 25,000 on the recent harvest.