Dear Ms. Lardinois & Mr. Marchand,

I came across your paper entitled "Technical and financial performance at
integrated composting-waste management project sites in the P'pines, India &
Nepal" on the web http://www.ias.unu.edu/procedings/icibs/ic-mfa/lardinois/
Thanks for producing this informative piece.
At the moment, I am completing a consulting contract with IDRC on Urban
Agriculture in India and have cited your work in the passage below for my report.

"In a recent publication by Inge Lardinois and Rogier Marchand (in
Bidlingmaier et.al.1999) it was found that KCDC’s plant on the outskirts of
Bangalore was producing 27 tons [ of compost per day. Despite this
remarkable figure, the KCDC’s output only accounts for 1.5% of organic waste
composted in and around Bangalore."

and a bit further in this section:

A recent study by Lardinois and Marchand (1999) indicates that the Terra
Firma plant was producing nine tons of compost per day accounting for 3.5%
of the compost produced in Bangalore.

I was wondering if you would be kind enough to answer two simple questions for me:

Are you referrring to metric tonnes, US tons or Imperial tons?
In the table on P. 2 of hte website you refer to "percentage of organic
waste composted". I have interpreted the figure of 1.5% for KCDC as above
but this figure seems very low to me. Also, Dr. Christine Furedy thinks
there may be a mistake on the website. Is this figure indeed correct or have
I misinterpreted or missed something?
Many thanks for your attention.

Sincerely,
Gisèle Yasmeen, Ph.D.
Research Associate
University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada
www.iar.ubc.ca
www.sdri.ubc.ca

Principal,  Agora Associates
Food Research & Consulting
www.geocities.com/agora_associates