Dear Gisele,

Thank you for your interest in our article.

>Are you referrring to metric tonnes, US tons or Imperial tons?

To answer your first question, I believe the figures to be stated are in
metric tonnes. I believe so because unfortunately I don't have all the
documents of the local case studies with me, here in Loja, Ecuador. I will
check with Inge - she is probably on holidays right now but will be back next week.

>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.

With respect to your second question I can confirm that the figures are
correct. The idea is the following; we considered the organic waste input
(measured in metric tonnes) in the composting production process to be an
indicator of the contribution to the overall waste problem in Bangalore.
Though it is true that KCDC is producing much more compost (ie. 27 ton/day)
than Terra Firma (ie. 9 ton/day), TF is taking in much more organic waste
(ie. 25,000 ton/year) whereas KCDC processes "only" 10,500 ton/year. So in
general terms TF is "contributing" more to the reduction of the total amount
of municipal waste generated than KCDC does.

In the case of TF, it takes in around 25,000 ton/year and only produces 9
ton/day, say 3,300 ton/year of compost production for commercial sales. Now
if we consider for this simple purpose a natural degredation ratio for
organic waste of 1:3, it is obvious that the compound of TF in Bangalore is
mounting organic waste that is either not composted, or composted but left
untouched: (25,000/3) = 8,300 ton/year of natural composted organic waste of
which only 3,300 ton/year is sold commercially. A small note is in its place:
I am not sure whether the 1:3 ratio is applicable for TF. It could be that
they actually reduce the 25,000 ton/year of organic waste to 3,300 ton/year
of compost. I have to ask Inge Lardinois.

The case for KCDC is just the other way around. Though it is taking in
organic wastes of 10,500 ton/year, it is producing 9,600 ton/year. This
clearly doesn't make sense unless KCDC is using "stored compost" at its site.
It was found that KCDC is actually addressing to existing volumes of already
composted organic waste volumes.

Most probably you didn't have access to this latter information. Hopefully I
have answered your questions.

And give my regards to Dr. Furedy when you see her. She may not remember me
but we once met at WASTE when she was working on a book with Inga and Esha.

Warm regards,
Rogier