Nexus of Good: An immaculate city

Indore, earlier known as an industrial town of Madhya Pradesh, shot into prominence in 2017 when it was declared the cleanest city of India. It continued to be awarded with the cleanest city title every year thereafter. It won the award again in 2021. What brought about the transformation that has been sustained for so many years?

It wasn't very easy to begin with. A number of challenges were faced initially while setting up a clean system in the city:

• Insufficient knowledge and self-motivation of residents, community and operation staff

• Weak financial support and management crunch

• Lack of involvement of stakeholders, including the private sector and non-governmental organisations

• Lack of public participation

• Lack of strengthening of monitoring and enforcement institutions

To overcome these challenges, it was decided to transform the city through strategic planning and municipal waste management.

Indore Municipal Corporation (IMC) developed the capacity to collect, transport and treat 1,100 MTs of waste generated every day. This goal was achieved through support from citizens and stakeholders in the following manner:

• 100 per cent source segregation of waste into dry and wet waste

• 100 per cent door-to-door collection

• 100 per cent transportation of waste to processing facility

• 100 per cent treatment of wet waste by composting

• 100 per cent treatment of dry waste in two material recovery facility

• 100 per cent utilisation of all rag pickers in the city in material recovery facility

• 100 per cent recovery of land from old dump through bio-mining process

• 100 per cent vehicles equipped with GPS with geotagging and real-time monitoring through control room

• 100 per cent workers' registration with biometric system and transfer of wages directly to their accounts

Extensive work was carried out to strengthen infrastructure and ensure efficient operation and maintenance of solid waste management.

Information, Education and Communication (IEC) has been the key to behavioural change.

The first step, therefore, was to create awareness among the people and the community through pamphlets, loud speakers, rallies, meetings and public participation. People were made aware to segregate wet and dry waste, and were informed about its benefits and consequences on human health and environment.

Door-to-door collection and transportation services were designed in such a way that the citizens received the services on all 365 days of a year, irrespective of any national holidays, festivals and Sundays. Accordingly, a ward-wise deployment plan of sanitary workers, drivers and utilisation of vehicles was prepared.

For better segregation, three bins are used in each house. Door-to-Door collection of waste is being done in all 85 wards of the city using partitioned vehicles. There are three separate collection compartments for wet, dry and domestic hazardous waste in each tipper. The wet waste from semi-bulk generators generating 25 to 100 kg of waste is collected through the dedicated Bulk Collection System.

The collected wet waste is transported by the tippers to one of the ten transfer stations. At the garbage transfer station (GTS), the tippers unload the wet waste into dedicated compactors that compress and load the wet waste on dedicated hook loaders. The details of all the incoming waste collection vehicles are logged in the log books at the GTS. Aadhar-based biometric attendance of all the workers is taken every day. All vehicles are monitored by a GPS enabled tracking system. Any route deviation is penalised and multiple deviations could even lead to termination.

Sweeping of roads less than 18 meters wide is done manually by sanitary workers of IMC and wider roads are cleaned by 10 ultra-modern mechanised road sweeping machines. 400-km roads are mechanically swept between 10 pm and 6 am. Gangs of workers are deployed parallelly to wash the squares, footpaths and monuments with pressure jet machines.

10 ultra-modern transfer stations have been developed at strategic locations to transfer the waste from small tippers to big hook loaders. From these transfer stations, wet waste is sent for processing.

The segregated MSW is compressed into respective containers. It is then lifted by a dedicated hook loader and sent to the disposal site.

The buckets of sanitary waste and domestic hazardous waste are off loaded into dedicated drums and transported to Common Biomedical Waste Facility (CBWTF) regularly.

The IMC took over an existing under-performing Centralized Organic Waste Processing Unit. After the takeover, complete overhauling of the plant, including repair of the machinery, was done. The compost plant is now working to its capacity of 600 MT of wet waste per day.

IMC established decentralised aerobic pit composting units in 414 gardens to treat lawn cuttings, leaves and tree branches. Depending upon the size of garden and quantity of garden waste generated, the onsite composting facility for garden waste has been developed. Decentralised processing for wet waste has been developed at vegetable and fruit markets and at Khajrana Ganesh Mandir for converting flower waste into compost through an organic waste converter system. Mobile composting vans for onsite treatment of organic waste generated from small food joints and restaurants has been deployed on contract basis.

The IMC took the initiative to produce and utilise Bio CNG resulting from processing of municipal solid waste. The project with 20 TPD capacity is set up in one of the wholesale markets of fruits and vegetables in Indore. This plant generates Bio CNG for public transport. It generates methane gas which is converted into CNG and utilised. Fifteen buses in Indore run on the Bio-CNG and consume nearly 500 kg of gas per day and cover more than 2,000 km per day.

On segregating dry and wet waste, around 500 TPD dry waste is generated. To handle and process such a large quantity of dry waste, IMC has developed a Material Recovery Facility. At this material recovery facility various fractions of dry waste like plastic, rubber, leather, glass, metal, cloth etc., are segregated by registered rag pickers. 1,753 rag pickers were identified after an extensive survey.

The non-biodegradable waste is segregated by category at the site. The recyclable low-density polyethylene (plastic bags) gets cleaned and is sent for recycling at existing plastic briquetting units, where the plastic briquettes are sold to an irrigation pipe manufacturer. Other smaller-volume recyclables such as paper / carton, glass, metals, HDPE, PPP, and PET are cleaned, sorted, bundled and traded to wholesalers at a cost-plus margin.

A construction and demolition waste processing plant of 1,00 TPD capacity, along with four transfer points for C&D waste, has been developed within the city.

The success of Indore shows that this is doable. It is a lighthouse project for MP and for other similar cities across the country. What is even more remarkable is that the wonderful and exemplary work initiated under the inspired leadership of the then Municipal Commissioner, Manish Singh was carried forward, consolidated and sustained by his extremely competent successor, Asheesh Singh. They have presented a great example of Nexus of Good that can be replicated in all the cities of the country.

Views expressed are personal.