India’s cleanest city and its waste-to-energy model
Indore, the largest city and commercial hub of Madhya Pradesh has made a breakthrough working system of converting waste into energy. Indore’s governance model is impactful and worth emulating for other cities and urban bodies for the management of municipal waste.
Under the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) which is a country-wide campaign initiated by the Government of India in 2014 to eliminate open defecation and improve solid waste management, municipalities, and municipal corporations are ranked based on their open defecation-free status and other measures of cleanliness. Indore was the first city to receive the national Cleanest City award in 2017 and has consistently been in this position for six years until 2022.
It is remarkable how this city has progressed from being at 149th rank in this survey during the year 2014 to be the top city in India with regard to cleanliness for six consecutive years. It has not been easy, but Indore shows it’s not impossible!
Each day, Indore generates over 1,115 MT of waste, which is collected from both residential and commercial sources. Initiated in 2016 as a pilot, it took almost one year to achieve the door-to-door garbage pick-up service. The citizens of Indore have a huge role to play in this journey.
The following are the key enabling features that helped Indore win the award for India's cleanest city.
- Garbage Collection System: Indore follows a door-to-door collection system that covers all 19 zones and 85 wards of Indore. The previous management system that also had private contractors was revamped by a) a door-to-door collection system for residential areas, b) semi-bulk and bulk waste generators like commercials including hotels, and hospitals are covered by the bulk collection system. An efficient governance system has been in place to accomplish the door-to-door collection effectively from all the areas of the city.
- Weighment Bridge facility: The central processing plant has a weighing bridge facility that is an automated facility where the weight of all the wet waste that is being collected by the door-to-door collection and the bulk collection system is brought to be weighed before it can move to the processing plant. The wet waste is transported to the central wet waste processing plant, where it is processed into compost. Domestic Hazardous Waste as well as biomedical waste is incinerated. The remains after incineration are landfilled.
- Energy from waste: Through its bio methanation plants, the wet waste is daily treated to produce bio CNG. This CNG is used as fuel to run city buses and other government-owned city transportation. Asia’s largest bio-CNG plant is set up in Indore. This plant can process 550 tonnes of organic solid municipal waste per day to produce 17000 kg of bio-CNG & 100 tonnes of organic compost.
- Improving the quality of lives: The rag pickers have been re-oriented and currently work at a plastic waste collection center with the help of partner NGOs. Plastic wastes are reused for cement manufacturing in Neemuch and also for the construction of roads by the Madhya Pradesh Rural Road Development Board.
- Citizens’ support: The Indore Municipal Corporation invested in repeated communication and awareness drives for its residents on the benefits of proper waste management and the citizens in return have shown their solidarity with their city by being true cleanliness ambassadors.
The journey was tough but Indore Municipal Corporation has set an example for other cities through their effective planning, coordination, and execution of solid waste management systems in the city. Indore's waste-to-energy model is recognized as one of the most effective and cost-effective solutions to wet waste in the world. And, many countries are set to replicate this model to deal with solid waste because this brings a win-win for everyone.
Further readings:
https://www.smartcityindore.org/solid-waste/
