Some where high rainfall - cloud burst, some where no rainfall – drought, disturbances in season’s timing and impacts, hotter summer followed by colder winter, untimely snowfall – all these are symptoms of Global warming. The year 2022 is experiencing heavy floods throughout India, inundation of almost all metropolitan cities, disastrous landsides in hills and frequent cloudbursts. Green house gases are responsible for these un-happenings. All countries are trying to control the emission of green house gases, a lion share of these gases generate from the heaps of municipal solid wastes. Every country is highly concerned with their ever increasing load of municipal solid wastes.

India, the second most populous country in the world after China, is trying hard to provide basic needs like food, shelter, clothes, electricity and education facility to its 1,316 million people and to upgrade itself from the stage of ‘Developing economy’ to ‘Developed economy’. Table 1.1 depicts the trend of population increase from 1154 million to 1316 million during 2009 to 2018 with diminishing growth rate from 1.42% to 1.12%. Growing demand of ever increasing population has been met so far by over exploiting natural resources like land, water, fossil fuels, forests and mineral resources which resulted rapid unplanned urbanization, quick depletion of fossil fuels, more and more waste generation, alarming increase in environmental pollution, deforestation with loss of plant and animal species, desertification of cultivable land due to soil erosion, soil contamination & soil salinity and increase in health diseases due to malnutrition, starvation and environmental pollution.

The importance of earthworms in agriculture and human health has been realized since prehistoric times. The famous Greek philosopher, Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) first described the importance of earthworm by calling them as “The intestines of the Earth”. The question, ‘How lime and charcoal from soil surface gets into lower layers?’ in the mind of Sir Charles Darwin (1809-1882 A.D.) ended up with the findings in 1837 that earthworms took those materials to lower layers and it played a significant role in formation of humified soil layer. He wrote in his book, “The formation of vegetable mould through the actions of worms” in 1881 that ‘The plough is one of the most ancient and most valuable of man’s inventions; but long before he existed the land was in fact regularly ploughed, and still continues to be thus ploughed by earthworms.

Solid wastes, the unavoidable consequences of civilization, are the useless and unwanted heterogeneous solid materials discarded by human being. Human greed is the major factor in creation of unwanted solid wastes. With increase in human population and its demands, there is an increase in production of various types of wastes. When human being did not come to the earth there was very little wastes like tree leaves, animal excreta or dead parts which nature used to digest and produces something beautiful every time. Still there are certain remote areas free from wastes where human being could not reach due to inaccessible condition of terrain, forests and islands. Now–a-days wastes are found even in the top of Mt. Everest or in the interior of Antarctica.

Even though the great Indian author Surpala mentioned in his epic ‘Vriksha ayurveda’ (Science of Tree growing) about the value of incorporation of earthworms in soil for better propagation of pomegranate plants in 10th century AD, but Sir Charles Darwin’s recognition to earthworms as ‘Farmer’s friends’ in 1837 in fact, inspired researchers throughout the world to study the role of earthworms in soil ecosystem. Earthworms are defined as soft, bilaterally symmetrical, tubular segmented worms which contain clitella gland, prostomium lobe in front of mouth and anus at the posterior end. The entire body is divided externally into a series of distinct segments. Scientifically these terrestrial worms are classified under phylum ‘Annelida’ due to presence of annuli or ring segments and class ‘Oligochaeta’ due to presence of few setae or hair like structure on all segments except the first and last ones.

Production of any selected species of earthworm in a particular place adopting semi-natural condition is called vermiculturing. As discussed earlier in chapter 2 and 4, commercial production of certain earthworm species is essential to meet up the huge demand of earthworms for vermicomposting of organic wastes, for production of earthworm meal for pet animals, poultry and fish farming, for preparation of medicine and for their use in reducing toxic chemicals from soil and water, etc. Since during vermicomposting, earthworm multiplies in vermicompost beds, many people confuse between this two terms – vermiculturing and vermicomposing.

Composting means decomposing organic wastes. It is a safe, non-polluting and microbiological method for disposal and recycle of organic wastes by converting those to balanced plant food materials, commonly known as compost, the organic fertilizer. In other words, the mineralization and partial humifi cation of organic materials by the action of microorganisms under suitable condition is called composting (Figure 6.1). The organic wastes undergo different physical and chemical changes with the help of microbes like bacteria, fungi, actinomycetes, etc. During composting the population of pathogenic microorganism reduces while that of benefi cial microorganism increases.

Vermicomposting is the rapid aerobic non-thermophilic composting technique for decomposition of various biodegradable wastes using epigeic earthworms in comparison to other conventional pit or heap composting techniques. Earthworms fragment the half decomposed organic material, mix and promote microbial activity. Worm utilizes 5-10% of food for its body growth and excretes remaining portion as vermicompost. The action of earthworm is both mechanical and biochemical. Mechanical fragmentation of the half decomposed organic material to finer particles by earthworm in its gizzard helps to increase surface area of action by microbes and aeration inside bed. Biochemical action improves the enzymatic digestion, nutrient enrichment and change in organic and inorganic contents.

Municipal solid wastes (MSW), the wastes generated in municipality area, are complex heterogenous in nature due to its collection from different places like residence, markets, institutes, hotels, etc., together before disposal. As per Hazardous waste (Management & Handling) Rules, 1989 and Bio medical wastes (Management & Handling) Rules, 1998, the industrial wastes generated in various factories and biomedical wastes generated in hospitals and nursing homes should not be dumped in MSW collection site as disposal process for those wastes are different as directed by Government of India in those rules. But those wastes produced by smaller units are discarded in street dustbin, which make disposal problematic.

Vermicompost is the result of the biooxidation and stabilization process of organic wastes by joint action of earthworms and microbial decomposers. In this process all nutrients present in organic wastes are transformed to plant available forms. Earthworms also secret various plant growth hormones along with polysaccharides, proteins and other nitrogenous compounds. Vermicompost, therefore, improves aeration, soil structure, nutrient availability, water holding capacity, ground biodiversity and nutrient efficiency, enhancing germination, growth and yield of crops. As compaired to farm yard manure, vermicompost contains 40 to 60% higher levels of humic substances and is superior in quality than conventional composts. The effect of humic substances is more prominent in stimulating root respiration, formation and growth, which in turn improves upper growth including the shoots, leaves, flowers and fruits (Theunissen et al., 2010).

The harmful impact of chemical pesticides and fertilizers like gradual low productivity of land, growing nutrient imbalance in cultivated soils, accumulation of high pesticide residue in food materials, increasing resistance of harmful pests towards chemical pesticides and continuous increase in environmental pollution are forcing farmers to adopt organic or sustainable farming by considering vermicompost as possible substitute to the costly chemical fertilizers during crop cultivation. Gradual awareness among common people on organic farming, large availability of organic wastes in both rural as well as urban areas, more avenues of vermicomposting training, global market for organically produced foods and ever increasing unemployment problem have opened up greater prospects of commercial vermicomposting (Sannigrahi, 2012).

Solid waste disposal has become Nation’s great concern since after spending more than 50 percent of their budget by Municipalities, they could collect and dispose about 70% of MSW leaving many parts of the municipality unclean every day and residents are not at all satisfied (Sannigrahi, 2016). The Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) collected data from 299 cities of India on the mode of collection of MSW and found that manual collection comprised 50% while collection using trucks comprised only 49% (CPCB Report, 2000). It is very interesting to note that majority (more than 90%) of MSW are disposed by dumping in unscientific open land filling on outskirts of towns and cities while 10% of collected and 2% of uncollected MSW are burnt in open condition.

Startup India, the initiative of Government of India, was first announced by Honourable Prime Minister Mr Narendra Modi during his Independence Day speech on 15 August, 2015 and discussed elaborately again on 27 December 2015 in his radio address ‘Maan ki baat’ mentioning startup as new opportunities for the youth who want to set up new business or innovative projects. Indian Government lunched this ‘Startup India – Standup India’ campaign on 16 January 2016 with an intention to build a strong startup ecosystem for nurturing innovation and encouraging private investment.

India, the world’s fifth largest economy by nominal GDP and the third largest by Purchasing Power Parity, is in the transition phase to change from ‘Developing country’ to ‘Developed Country’. The growth of Indian economy is positive in the global arena due to its young population ready to face global competitiveness, make in India policy and continuing economic liberalization. The India with 500 million workers is the world’s second largest labour force, the 21st largest exporter and 6th largest manufacturer with 2.6% global manufacturing output. In 2019 the occupation of Indian labour force were distributed as 42.60% in Agriculture sector, 32.28% in services and 25.12% in Industrial sector. Any development work ultimately generates a considerable quantity of waste materials.