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NCERT Solutions for Class 5th The World Around Us Chapter 4 In your school and in your home — How is wet waste managed?

Book page 62 Updated on2026-09-19

Q1.
How is wet waste managed? 1. In your school
Answer

The best answer for a school is a compost pit — the wet waste never leaves the campus and comes back as manure for the garden.

How a school compost pit works, step by step

  1. Dig a pit in a shady corner, about as deep as your knee and as wide as your arms spread out. A big drum with holes in the bottom works just as well.
  2. Put a layer of dry leaves at the bottom.
  3. Every day, add the wet waste — vegetable peels from the mid-day meal, leftover food, fallen leaves, tea leaves.
  4. After each day's addition, cover it with a thin layer of soil or dry leaves. This is the step people forget, and it is the one that stops the smell and the flies.
  5. Sprinkle a little water if it looks dry. It should feel damp like a squeezed sponge, never wet like mud.
  6. Turn the heap with a spade once a week to let air in.
  7. After about two to three months, the bottom of the pit has become dark, crumbly, sweet-smelling soil. That is compost.
  8. Sieve it and spread it around the school's trees and vegetable beds.
Why it turns into soil: Tiny living things — microbes — and small creatures like earthworms eat the soft waste and break it down. They need three things: air, a little moisture, and a mix of wet (green peels) and dry (brown leaves). Give them those and they do all the work for free.
Goes into the compost pitMust never go in
Vegetable and fruit peels, leftover cooked food, tea leaves, egg shells, fallen leaves, weeds, flowersPlastic and wrappers, glass, metal, batteries, chalk, painted paper — none of these rot, and they spoil the compost

Sample answer: “In our school, the peels from the mid-day meal kitchen and the leaves swept from the ground go into a compost pit behind the kitchen. Class 5 covers it with soil every Friday and turns it with a spade. Last month we took out one full basket of compost and put it around the guava trees. If a school has no pit, the wet waste goes into the green bin and is taken away by the municipal van.”

Q2.
How is wet waste managed? 2. In your home
Answer

At home, wet waste is managed in four ways — and most Indian homes use more than one of them.

  1. It is fed to animals. Vegetable peels, roti and leftover rice go to the cow, the buffalo, the goat, the street dog or the birds. In villages this is the commonest way, and almost nothing is wasted.
  2. It is composted. A pot, a bucket with holes, or a pit in the courtyard. Peels go in, a handful of dry soil goes on top. In two months it is manure for the tulsi and the money plant.
  3. It is collected in the green bin. In towns, the municipal van comes each morning with a bell. Wet waste goes into the green bin and dry into the blue, and the van takes it to a composting or processing centre.
  4. It is used up before it becomes waste. Vegetable water becomes gravy or is poured into the plant pots. Stale rice becomes the next morning's dish. This is the best method of all, because the waste is never created.
Why wet waste must not be tied in a plastic bag: Inside a sealed plastic bag there is no air, so the waste cannot rot properly. It only turns sour and smelly, and the plastic reaches the dump along with it. If you must use a bag, use a paper one, or line the bin with newspaper.
Find out at home: ask what happens to your kitchen waste, and whether anything is fed to an animal, put in a pot, or thrown away. Write down what you find and compare it with your friends' answers in class — you will discover that homes in the same street manage it very differently.
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