Young gated community in Chennai bags composting project

Sometimes, work is rewarded with more work. Clover By The River (CBTR), a gated community in Kotturpuram, is the recipient of such a reward. It considers itself to be in an enviable situation, because 12 other communities were seeking that increase in their daily workload.

The seeds of this competition, certainly not a no-holds-barred one, but one involving like-minded green souls and therefore one assumes it to have been more of “coopetition” (competition ruled by a spirit of cooperation), was scattered when the brains behind “We Segregate Stewardship Program” wanted to take it beyond Kasturba Nagar. In Kasturba Nagar, the visible sign of the initiative is three lane composters, and bagfulls of compost every three months.

The idea behind the contest was to have lane composters parked in at least one more community in Chennai.

(We Segregate project is funded by the Urban Ocean program and nurtured by Okapi Research & Advisory, ROKA and Chennai Resilience Centre with the support of on-ground partners which include Greater Chennai Corporation and Urbaser Sumeet).

The exercise to find a new community that could be “saddled” with the responsibility of lane-composting in its environs, had 13 contestants.

In the first round, the contestants were quizzed by a panel, says Ayesha A., research associate, Okapi Research and Advisory. Their SWM journeys were being tracked to see if the additional responsibility would have their current SWM programme enhanced or have it broken down the back.

Based on the study, three made it to the shortlist — RK Nagarra from Mandaveli, SIMPLE from Thalambur and Clover By The River from Kotturpuram.

“All the three were strong contestants, each of them having an unique and inspiring SWM track record,” says Ayesha. “The winner was collectively chosen by Okapi Research and Advisory, ROKA, Chennai Resilience Center and Urban Ocean teams.”

Clover By The River will find two lane composters parked in its neck of the woods in January 2026, after Pongal, says Ayesha.

Here is a glimpse of the SWM ethos at this gated community in Kotturpuram through the eyes of inside volunteer. This is based on a document a resident-volunteer of the Green Team in the community shared with The Hindu Downtown.

“We are a young, three year old, 300 apartment, gated community in Kotturpuram. Once residents started moving in during 2022, we realised that we had a group of like-minded residents interested in activities relating to sustainable living. The Green Team was formed when barely 30 residents had moved in. Being a 300 apartment community we were categorised as bulk waste generators by the Greater Corporation of Chennai). We also understood that proper waste segregation was not just important for the community and the environment but also mandated by the GCC. After much discussion, observation, monitoring, testing and consulting subject matter experts we realised that the in-house composter we were using, produced output that was potentially harmful to the soil and plants in the long run. With the support of our Association we were able to come up with an alternative method of green waste handling that was also acceptable to the GCC. We now have a GCC empanelled vendor who picks up our green waste and reject waste. Our recyclable plastics are collected by Bisleri as part of their CSR initiative.”