Women changemakers expected to lead the effort
1,000 cities are targeted to become 3-Star Garbage Free by October 2024”, said Hardeep S Puri, Minister for Housing and Urban Affairs on the occasion of International Zero Waste Day 2023. Highlighting the progress in the GFC-Star rating protocol, launched in January 2018 to encourage a competitive, mission-mode spirit among ULBs, he further said that the certification has increased exponentially since inception. While interacting with ‘Swachhta Doots’ from across the nation, the Minister congratulated them for being changemakers and leaders in their community and also turning challenges into livelihood opportunities.
Speaking about the achievements of the Mission, the Minister informed that urban India has become Open Defecation Free (ODF), with all 4,715 Urban Local Bodies (ULBs) completely ODF, 3,547 ULBs are ODF+ with functional and hygienic community and public toilets and 1,191 ULBs are ODF++ with complete faecal sludge management. Further, waste processing in India has gone up by over four times from 17% in 2014 to 75% today. This has been aided through 100% door-to-door waste collection in 97% wards and source segregation of waste being practiced by citizens across almost 90% wards in all ULBs in the country.
The efforts towards transforming cities to become garbage free received a fresh impetus with the launch of Swachhotsav 2023. The campaign aimed to galvanise participation and leadership of women to realize the goal of ‘Garbage Free Cities’. Swachhotsav campaign was a platform for over 4,00,000 women entrepreneurs taking up leadership roles in urban sanitation.
The Minister lauded the ‘Rally for Garbage Free Cities’ as a women led Jan Andolan, wherein lakhs of citizens have taken on the responsibility of cleaning their streets, neighbourhoods, and parks.
Manoj Joshi, Secretary, MoHUA commended the role of women’s leadership in ensuring circularity of waste management and implementing a zero-waste approach turning waste into valuable resources. He stressed the need to upscale self-help groups to a professional level so as to ensure higher income generation for these groups.
The event saw participation of mayors, commissioners and mission directors who discussed Circularity in Garbage Free Cities, Women and Youth for GFC, Business and Tech for GFC. The event also saw a Fireside Chat with mayors where states like Bihar, Jharkhand, UP, Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh shared their best practices and success stories.
