Peepal Baba with Composting Waste & Planting Trees, making a Greener India
February 17th , 2019 | Akshat Tyagi
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Great Composting movement across India
Peepal Baba, Founder, Give Me Trees Trust, has been working on planting and preservation of trees with focus on soil conservation. Since 1977, he has been recycling kitchen waste into compost and using the same to create small nurseries for plants. ‘Micro composting’ as he likes to call it, has been one of the highlights of the movement.
What started as an idea turned into a movement. His grandmother taught him to recycle kitchen waste into a rich potting medium in earthen pots and nursery bags way back in in 1977. Since then he has never looked back. He went on to create the largest composting movement in the history of this country.
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Volunteers, friends and family of Peepal Baba supported him in his passion to convert kitchen waste into compost, which he used as his planting medium for the 12 million peepal trees he planted and preserved in a span of over 42 years of work.
Recycling Waste for better tommorrow
Peepal Baba started collecting broken buckets, earthen vessels and pots from the families living around his residential area to recycle wet waste that he would collect regularly from his neighbours. He created small teams to work on various aspects of collection, transportation, storing and recycling of waste collected from households. He went house to house teaching people segregation methods. His tips for collecting and converting spread like wildfire in the 1990s. By 2010, several celebrities like John Abraham, Gautam Gambhir and Richa Anirudh joined him in his efforts.
Without a break he mastered the art of composting and taught the skill and shared his tips with friends and co-workers. He developed a huge following in Maharashtra, Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir. He travelled far and wide to take the message across of turning waste into a soil conditioner.
Green workshops for training all
Born to parents with an army background (his father retired from Indian army as a Brigadier) he travelled to all states and union territories of India. He has followers in every nook and corner of India, planting trees and working on the soil.
He helped people open up new NGOs who worked on composting and tree planting work. Various clubs and associations started approaching him to understand his methods. His low budget solutions at recycling waste caught the fancy of many and hundreds started following him.
He has covered over 600 government and private schools with his message of composting. He teaches students and teachers how to make the best use of what they produce in the pantries, kitchens and canteens. In residential societies he conducts Green Workshops with the purpose of training housing projects, office bearers of Resident welfare Organisations and clubs.
Compost Country - A nation wide campaign
Peepal Baba and his army of volunteers believe that compost is a natural resource - like rivers -and should be freely available to everyone.
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Compost Country is a nationwide campaign by Peepal Baba and his NGO Give Me Trees Trust and is now 42 years old.
More than 40,000 families and 60,000 students across the country have taken to his methods and created rich planting medium for his plant nurseries and tree planting projects.
The author of the story is Akshat Tyagi, member of ‘Give Me Trees’ and you can reach out to them at https://givemetrees.org.in/
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