Creating wealth from waste: An approach for converting organic waste in to value-added products using microbial consortia

Abstract In the current scenario, great emphasis is being made on the recovery, recycling, and reconditioning of organic solid waste. With a focus on the bioconversion of organic waste into value-added products, municipal vegetable waste was fractionated into liquid and solid part. The solid fraction was subjected to biodegradation in the presence of different microbial consortia and different enzymes were extracted. The remaining solid stuff was converted into animal feed, followed by the evaluation of its microbiological and chemical indices. Liquid fraction separated from waste was used as a crude medium to grow different bio-fertilizer strains. Among the three consortia, consortium C (Aspergillus terreus and Myrothecium verrucaria) showed the maximum production of amylase, cellulase, xylanase and pectinase after 4 days. Results of the microbiological and chemical parameters of the animal feed prepared from the fermented vegetable waste showed that the various parameters were found to be within the permissible limit. The average concentrations of heavy metals in the compost was found to be within the permissible limit of FCO standard, therefore, it can also be used for agricultural application. For using liquid extract of the vegetable waste, maximum CFU count 1.9 × 106, 1.1 × 106, and 8.7 × 10 5 was achieved in BAB 1980, BAB 662, and BAB 267 strain, respectively after 30 h of incubation. Thus, the present study demonstrated the bioconversion of vegetable waste into crude enzymes, animal feed, compost, and liquid biofertilizer.