Thiruvananthapuram: Two acres of land, poultry waste will be gone

Thiruvananthapuram: A company has come forward with the proposal that they are ready to process chicken waste in Thiruvananthapuram Corporation for free. All they need are two acres of land and that is the catch.  The Corporation is trying its best to find two acres of land in the city, but with little hope that the people around will be ok with it. (For, after the shutdown of the plant at Vilappilsala, city residents view even material recovery facilities with suspicion, even though these are merely centres to collect waste.)

The company, Organo Fertilisers (India) Private Limited, has a plant at Edayar, in Ernakulam district, which is also situated in a two-acre plot. It can process 40 metric tonnes of poultry waste per day. Their proposed plan is to create a similar plant in Thiruvananthapuram and they are confident that they will be able to generate revenue from the waste. For they turn even chicken feather into protein meal, claims the company director Abey Mathew. 

“Chicken feather is a rich source of keratin protein, but it needs to be turned into an easily digestible form. We achieve this through hydrolysis at a fixed temperature, pressure and time. This is widely used as aquafeed and pet food. Abroad, it is even used as cattlefeed. Since we have no scarcity in finding the material, the revenue model will work. The only thing is we need to make sure that the material is fresh,” he says.

Thiruvananthapuram Corporation has been depending on another private firm, Amala Eco Clean, for dealing with poultry waste. But with poultry consumption increasing each year and waste from poultry farms and restaurants ending up in canals and rivers, this is a problem escalating by the day. Mr Mathew says that as chicken feather, especially, takes a stubbornly long time to decompose, any strategy to process it should be considered with seriousness.