Evolution of chemical and biological characterization during agitated pile composting of flower waste

Purpose Flower waste dumping in landfills and otherdisposal sites is causing major environmental issues due toits highly biodegradable nature. Instead, flower waste canbe successfully composted for its higher nutrient value.Therefore, this study evaluated the pile composting offlower waste with different combinations of cow dung andsaw dust to produce stabilized compost.Methods Five agitated piles of flower waste mixture wereformed in trapezoidal shape to perform the composting.Pile (P0) was a control experiment, which contained100 kg flower waste. The quantity of flower waste mixturewith cow dung and saw dust in the other Piles was a total of100 kg i.e. P1 (50:40:10) kg, P2 (60:30:10) kg, P3(70:20:10) kg and P4 (80:10:10) kg, respectively.Results Temperature above 50 C was observed in all thepiles except in P0. Physico-chemical characteristics ofcompost showed a stabilized compost obtained by proportionatemix of flower waste, cow dung and saw dust.Pile P2 was observed with pH 7.23 and electrical conductivity3.98 mS cm-1, total organic carbon 30.9%, totalnitrogen 2.31% and C:N ratio 14, thus a good proportionfor compost amongst all the piles.Conclusions Appropriate proportion of waste mixtureplayed an important role in providing favorable conditionsfor the microbial transformation of flower waste to stabilizedcompost. Temperature influenced the growth ofmicrobes and maximum temperature was helpful in fastdegradation of organic matter. Finally, flower waste with acombination of cow dung and saw dust was found to besuccessful during pile composting.