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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/apr/04/how-indian-city-indore-beat-the-rubbish>
"This is what happens usually in India: a politician wakes up and launches a
cleanliness “drive” with fanfare. They ostentatiously start sweeping a street
and speak solemnly about civic duty while the media take photos. The next day
it’s over and things go back to how they were before.
But not in Indore in Madhya Pradesh. From 2017, when it won the prize for being
the cleanest city in the country, it kept winning for eight straight years,
until last year.
“When you come out of the airport, it feels as though you aren’t in India, it’s
so clean,” said Nitisha Agarwal, a corporate executive who travels to Indore
frequently for work.
Before 2017, Indore had been ranked 25th of 471 towns and cities in the
government’s cleanliness rankings.
The transformation has covered many aspects of public life, from the way waste
is removed and treated to the army of about 850 sweepers and the thousands of
differently coloured bins that line even the smallest alley.
In many cities, families will keep their home scrupulously clean, but a few
feet from their front door rubbish is left lying around.
“That other area is seen as someone else’s responsibility and no one sees any
contradiction in walking past a stinking pile of rubbish to their clean home,”
said Arjun Sehgal, a local chemistry tutor.
Indore was once dotted with fetid garbage dumps where stray cows, pigs and dogs
rootled around and added their excrement to the pile, attracting swarms of
flies.
But now in the early morning, pavements and road dividers are hosed down with
recycled water. The garbage vans roll out playing a jingle called
Indore Has
Become Number One. As the sound approaches, people emerge from their homes
with their rubbish.
Using GPS tracking, a team of workers monitor the vans’ movements to make sure
they are doing their job and not cutting corners. The local government says
100% of household waste is segregated into wet, electronics, plastics,
non-plastic, biomedical and hazardous materials.
The waste is converted into fuel and compost, which in turn is sold to farmers
as manure. Many restaurants have mobile composting vans stationed outside.
“The fruit and vegetable market near my house has different bins for different
kinds of waste. There is also a machine there which converts the waste to fuel
which is used by city buses and as cooking fuel,” said homemaker Neeru Sharma.
Riya Raghuvanshi, who lived in Indore for five years, said the push from
government had been a success because it had created a sense of civic pride in
the city. “It’s worked because there is so much pride in this award. Along with
the pride is a determination to maintain the city’s reputation. This has been a
great motivator,” she said."
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*** Xanni ***
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mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
