How Indian villages are becoming zero waste towns

The small village of Siluk in the East Siang district of Arunachal Pradesh became a ‘zero waste’ village in 2021.

The concerted efforts for recycling and composting of waste in the village were led by the Gram Panchayat, faculties and students from the local schools and colleges, and women participants in self-help groups.

Down south, Mannivakkam, a village in the Chengalpattu district of Tamil Nadu became a zero garbage village, with the establishment of a micro compost yard, ensuring complete source segregation of organic and inorganic wastes.

The Panchayat in the village is also set to install a water treatment system for the wastewater generated from kitchens and toilets.

In the state of Kerala, the city of Alappuzha has earned international recognition for revolutionizing municipal solid waste management. With intense awareness programs and active community participation, the organic compost pits were installed across Alappuzha, leading to a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and setting an example of a scalable model for the rest of the country.

A small village of Jaramkhuria in Assam also got the tag of the zero-waste village very recently. With the help of local NGOs and citizen groups, the villagers are involved in segregating waste into four groups: plastic, glass, metal, and paper, along with maintaining a compost pit. Their initiatives also revolve around boosting sales for local bamboo artisans, which provide a strong alternative to plastic goods.

In the west of India, Ambapur village in Gandhinagar earned fame as a zerowaste village, all due to the efforts made by local NGOs, crowdfunding, and student volunteers from a regional college. Not just citizen groups and local government bodies, but even spiritual organizations have played a crucial role in waste management.

The village of Padupanambur village in Karnataka was adopted by Ramakrishna Mission a few years back to transform it into a zero-waste village. The mission has previously been involved in organizing the Swachh Mangalore program.

Across the country, the zero-landfill model is gaining relevance rampantly; ensuring the maximum amount of waste is scientifically treated and recycled, eliminating the need for new landfills.

As per India's NITI Aayog’s report, Chhattisgarh’s Ambikapur, Maharashtra’s Chandrapur, and Kerala’s Taliparamba stand as the models for waste management practices.

Just like Siang, in Ambikapur, the intervention was made by the local administration and women’s self-help groups, ensuring 100% segregation, collection, and processing of waste.

In Indore (Madhya Pradesh), the active awareness campaigns have been successful in bringing behavioral change among the citizens, making it the cleanest city in India, six times in a row.

AGNIi Mission, a flagship initiative of the Government of India, is actively supporting Bhabha Atomic Research Centre which has developed scalable, highly energy efficient, and cost-effective e-waste recycling technologies, in transferring technologies to companies in e-waste market space in India.