THE recipe is simple: Take one man's waste, turn it into environmental treasure. Yet the "banana circle" has already paid dividends in the backyards of people in one of Fiji's closest neighbours Kiribati.
With the Clean Up Fiji campaign set to be launched today, the Kiribati "banana circle" experience is one that can help this nation cut back on the huge percentage of organic waste spilling into public areas. In fact, with fragile ecosystems and economies highly dependent on tourism, the Pacific islands would do well to heed the atoll experience.
"The world is being swamped by mountains of rubbish. This is a problem everywhere, and no more so than in the small island nations of the Pacific. The challenge is to deal with all this rubbish," the Pacific Regional Environment Program (SPREP) says in "Rubbish is a Resource!" a waste resource kit it produced for the Pacific Islands.
It used the Kiribati banana circle idea to illustrate one of the ways that island populations can deal with the rubbish problem, "by showing how to extract resources from the waste stream while keeping costs down".
"If we look at the waste stream as being full of resources, then the approach to dealing with it changes completely. The issue then becomes how to capture and use those resources. This approach is particularly challenging in the Pacific Islands, where shipping costs are high, recyclable material flows are small, and the environment for operating machinery is challenging. But there are ways in which things can be made much easier," SPREP says.
The banana circle philosophies themselves were derived from permaculture principles, with the circle as a way to process organic waste onsite with the minimum of effort. SPREP stresses the importance of the fact that such a process does not require much human effort, because that is something that "always appeals to the public". The Kiribati International Waters Project (IWP) helped spread the banana circle message through the community as an effective, low-cost, solution that can be used to help improve waste management.
When the project was launched about three years ago Ritia Bakineti was the national coordinator and ran a competition to find Banana Circle champions.
She told SPREP that they wanted to look for ways to support existing waste reduction initiatives and promote some practical solutions in the community.
"The main message we wanted to communicate during the competition was that waste is a valuable resource," she said.
The campaign took a three-pronged approach: Encouraging residents to reduce littering, compost plant material in "Banana Circles", and separate their remaining "waste" into the new biodegradable "Green Bags" for collection.
The banana circle idea was one that allowed families to not just reuse their organic waste, but to also move towards getting some economic gain out of it.
"A Banana Circle is a simple composting method where several banana trees are planted around a hole lined with cardboard and any plant waste is simply feed into the hole," she said.
"Sometimes grey water from the kitchen and laundry is piped in to feed the banana roots. This helps to keep organics out of the landfill and helps to protect the groundwater lens. Of course the main incentive for most people is that they get to grow a healthy supply of bananas for their families."
The main competition winners in Kiribati that first year were Ruka and Tekori Tekitanga, who told SPREP that their new Banana Circle helped them realise the value of their organic waste.
"The rich and fertile compost from their banana circle has been used to enhance their abundant garden that now includes flourishing cucumbers and cabbages," the program found. They have even harvested cabbages from the fresh rich compost which were earmarked for sale in the local market.
"Our youngest daughter, aged eight, sweeps the house every morning and puts the plant waste in our Banana Circle. The waste that does not rot is placed in the Green Bags," Mrs Tekitanga said.
Even wastewater from the laundry and dishwashing was reused in the Banana Circle, with the family finding that "in this way hardly any pollution will reach the groundwater, thus safeguarding the goodness of water."
So how exactly do you get a Banana Circle going? The SPREP Waste Kit says all you have to do is create a simple hemispherical pit lined with old flattened-out cardboard boxes. Then you fill it with any organic waste that comes out of the home.
"The same technique can be used to grow pawpaws, but bananas and pawpaws should not be grown together as they compete and one will kill the other soon. Other plants may be grown around such a pit compost system; the technique is not exclusive to bananas," the kit says.
"But where a useful, and often desired, food crop is grown using organic wastes, people are encouraged to use the technique. For example, in many atoll locations bananas are hard to grow and to get to fruit; a Banana Circle provides food to the plant to bring the fruit on".
Surprisingly, a Banana Circle compost heap can even absorb old tin cans and paper but these, SPREP says, should be in moderation. Wastewater from washing dishes and clothes, organic household waste and leaves and grass from the yard are perfect!
"In many Pacific Island villages, sweeping up the leaves around the house is part of the daily routine. Where a house has a Banana Circle, the sweepings can be swept straight into it rather than into a heap by the road, or into the garbage for removal".
SPREP says the Banana Circle builds on an ancient composting technique used in the past on atolls, where leaves and other rubbish on the ground were put into a pit near the house.
"Once the pit is full (and of course it is composting down all the time, and so takes a long time to fill up) a tree is planted on top. Another ancient technique is to pile leaves around the base of breadfruit trees. The Banana Circle is a refinement of these ancient traditional practices, where cardboard is used to encourage a mat of roots to grow along a damp lining to the pit, so that water is retained, and the full nutritional value of the compost is recovered by the plant," SPREP said.
The Banana Circle is one easy way that families can take charge of their waste, and turn it into environmental treasure.
SPREP says the Pacific "must remember the costs of not doing anything".
"Poor waste management costs governments, businesses and the public significant money, for example in extra health care costs and losses in fishing from polluted waters, from mosquito-borne diseases, and loss of tourism revenue, to name but a few areas.
"Litter causes a loss of community pride and creates a general unease about the ability of the government to deliver on services. There are sound political reasons for managing waste better".
So the next time you're taking out the trash, think about what sort of recipe you're working from. You may just have a Banana Circle waiting to happen.
What's organic waste?
Organic waste comes from animals and plants, or soil. In most Pacific Island countries, organic wastes will amount to about half the solid waste stream. In some places organics can be as much as 75% of the waste stream.
Organic wastes are extremely useful materials, and their value increases where the local soil is less fertile. On volcanic islands with rich, dark soils, where plants grow so easily and quickly, organic wastes are not so valuable, as the soil is so fertile.
But in places where the soil is poor (and in the Pacific the atoll islands usually have very poor soils), organic wastes are very valuable. They should be recovered from the waste stream at all costs where possible, as they can be an important source of fertiliser.
(Source: Rubbish is a Resource! SPREP)