How India's cleanest city handles its waste

INDORE (MP): Until last year, Indore was choking on its plastic waste. People used plastic indiscriminately which was collected and burned, sending toxic fumes into the air. But in January this year, the city hit on a way to recycle its plastic - by using it to make roads. This is just one example of how Indore, one of Madhya Pradesh's busiest cities, made it to the list of India's most swachh (clean) city this year.

Today, over 1,000 metric tonnes of garbage is collected daily from the source -whether it is an individual household or commercial establishment. Door-to-door service was started in June 2015 as a pilot project in two of the 84 wards in the city and became a resounding success. It took a year to achieve 100% door-to-door garbage collection.

The city's corporation has now set bigger goals. This includes complete waste segregation at source, managing the city landfill site at Devguradiya and establishing a waste-to-energy plant by 2019.

One of the significant challenges is managing the waste at the landfill site of Devguradia. The dumped garbage results in spontaneous combustion of gases. To this end, the municipal authorities plan to establish a modern transfer station (that will take garbage from tippers to collection centres), establish and operate small composting plants for biodegradable waste, plastic waste collection and processing unit.

Two engineered landfill sites of over six acres each are being created. Bioremediation, a waste management technique that involves the use of organisms to neutralise pollutants, will also be used to treat old waste in the next two years.

The city has also given contract for the establishment of a 20MW waste to energy plant, and there is a separate plan for processing construction and demolition waste.

But the nub of the problem, say environmentalists, is segregation of waste at source and a complete ban of plastic bags.This demands behavioural change. But now that Indore residents have tasted the positive impact of the Swachhta campaign, it may not be difficult.

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