CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background of Study

Kitchen waste is defined as left-over organic matter from restaurants, hotels and households (Li et al., 2009). Kitchen waste forms a significant part of domestic waste. Food waste is an unwanted raw or cooked food discarded during or after food preparation that is no longer fit for consumption or desirable. Toxic Links at New Delhi conducted a survey in May 2002 and prepared a fact file on solid waste which stated that about 0.1 million ton of municipal solid waste is generated in India every day. So, annual production of solid waste reaches approximately 36.5 million tones (Kaur and Arora, 2012). Composting is a natural process of rotting or decomposition of organic matter by microorganisms under controlled conditions. Composting helps to reduce the amount of waste that is being directed into landfills. This means a reduction of concentrated, toxic leachates and methane gas that is being released into the atmosphere, which equates to a decrease in overall pollution. Composting also cuts down on the usage of chemical fertilizers, which are harmful to water supply. Compost used to improve soil physical and biological properties i.e., water retention capacity, drainage, pH, better availability of soil micro-organism and reducing the negative impact of chemical based pesticides and fertilizers in the ecosystems. Organic matter is rich in compost, which plays a crucial role in improving physical, chemical and biological properties of the soils. Soil structure can be improved by binding the soil organic matter and clay particles via cat ion bridges and through stimulation of microbial activity and root growth. (Gao et al., 2010). As a result of these improvements, soil: (i) becomes more resistant to stresses such as drought, diseases and toxicity, (ii) helps the crop in uptake of plant nutrients and (iii) possesses an active nutrient cycling capacity because of vigorous microbial activity. There is a large variety of microorganisms present in waste such as bacteria, fungi, protozoa etc. Many fungi are capable of degrading cellulose by synthesizing large quantities of extracellular celluloses that are more efficient in deploymerizing the cellulose substrate. Many celluloses produced by bacteria appear to be bound to the cell wall and are unable to hydrolyze native lignocellulose preparations to any significant extent.

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