21032020-HaTrib-01.qxd 3/20/2020 6:45 PM Page 1 c m y b HARYANA TRIBUNE CITYSCAPE ■ ■ P2 MISCELLANY Toilets locked, vendors forced to defecate in open ■ …in Karnal, situation no different ■ P3 SATURDAY | 21 MARCH, 2020 | CHANDIGARH FOCUS P4 ■ Falling for imposters online a strict ‘no’ ■ Rajiv Kumar Joon — a brave Kunjeyan from Gaddhi Kheri village Water woes back to haunt residents of twin towns in Ambala Sanitation Kaithal’s distant dream Indore shows the way, Gurugram to follow suit Millennium city yet to get rid of its sanitation woes | Will now take a leaf out of cleanest city’s model of development Sumedha Sharma ISTOCK WHAT GURUGRAM CAN LEARN FROM INDORE Gurugram residents lead the most luxurious lifestyle which one can only imagine of. But despite having achieved many milestones, with expertly devised plans and a budget of several crores, it is yet to get rid of its sanitation woes. Often been sold as a Smart City in true sense, the city has till date failed to make it to country ’ s top-10 cleanest cities. Leave aside being among top-10, Gurugram actually slipped by 77 ranks in Swachh Survekshan-2020, as from being at the 83rd position in 2019, it slipped to 133 in January this year. Rattled by issues such as erratic garbage collection, waste dumping, poor sanitation in public places, negligible waste segregation at source and waste treatment, the city has now turned towards country’s cleanest city — Indore and decided to follow its model of development. Clearly impressed by sanitation and waste-dealing mechanism of Indore, which was highlighted recently, the Gurugram Municipal Corporation has decided to take a few leaves from their book. As a result, a special delegation of councillors headed by Additional Municipal Commissioner Amardeep Jain visited Indore last week. The team returned truly mesmerised and impressed and seems to have dug up the secret behind Indore’s successful sanitation model. It was not that Indore started as a winner. It ranked 149 and 25 on the cleanliness scale in 2014 and 2016, but has been topping the chart since 2017. According to local civic authorities, hard work, cooperation, and a system of rewards and punishments is the recipe for Indore’s success in becoming the cleanest city in India. PUBLIC PARK NEAR SECTOR 40 TRIBUNE PHOTOS: S CHANDAN RESIDENTIAL AREA OF SECTOR 26 NEAR HOUSING SOCIETY, SECTOR 31 Seven initiatives that brought the change Not just authorities, even residents of Indore have adopted what they call as ‘Sapt vachan for Swachhta’ or seven initiatives that have made city the cleanest of all. These are... ■ Everyday garbage disposal ■ Converting garbage to compost ■ Discouraging use of polythene ■ Dustbin on the wheels (in their cars) ■ Creating awareness among children (at home and schools) ■ Paying extra to civic authorities to clean venues after functions ■ The Eighth Vow, where a couple takes a cleanliness pledge after saat pheras on their wedding day ‘City a role model’ ❝ Both authorities and residents can learn a lot from Indore when it comes to ploughing revenue back in sanitation. Not just authorities, even informal stakeholders such as NGOs and residents in particular need to take a leaf out of Indore’s model of developement in terms of participation and support. Aspects such as at source segregation is being insisted upon since long but still not adopted by many. We have many residential societies composting their waste but the number is too less. We are now revamping our sanitation model and with the support of all stakeholders, we will surely get our righteous spot. ❞ AMARDEEP JAIN, Additional Commissioner, Gurugram c m y b 100 PER CENT WASTE SEGREGATION AT SOURCE: Prior to 2015, households would dump trash in and around big garbage bins at street corners. The staff of a private company would erratically collect garbage from these points. Cattle, stray dogs and flies manifested around these dumps, residents said. Residents of Indore would not acknowledge the colour-coded garbage bins and hence the concept of waste segregation. To overcome this, Indore Municipal Corporation adopted a binless city model and laid emphasis on door-to-door collection of waste. Once people started appreciating the facilities of door-to-door garbage collection, residents were asked to segregate their waste and the garbage collection vans became equipped with partitions, separating organic and inorganic waste. DECENTRALISED WASTE MANAGEMENT: Composting units should be set up near waste producers such as food stalls, vegetable markets and even cluster of households. It is economical and more hygienic to process waste near the source of waste production, as fewer people are exposed to the waste. It is also more environmentally sustainable. Indore is trying to set up mobile composting machines near all bulk waste producers such as hotels and residential apartment buildings. NGOs, PRIVATE ENTERPRISES AID WASTE PROCESSING: The Indore civic authorities have tied up with various NGOs thereby roping in information sector in the entire process. The NGOs are entrusted with a few lanes or wards each and they ensure that the collected waste is taken to 10 transfer stations across the city, where the staff makes sure the waste is properly segregated. From these transfer stations, the waste is taken to the waste processing facility. At the facility, tonnes of recyclable waste is daily sifted through and separated by 300-odd workers. The recyclable waste is sold to either the recycling industry or to companies that use recycled material. CONVERTING WASTE TO FUEL: For the decentralised processing of waste from the vegetable, fruit and flower markets, a biomethanation facility — which converts organic waste to methane — has been set up opposite Indore’s main market. “About 20 tonnes of waste is collected every day and converted into 750800 kg of bio-compressed natural gas (bioCNG),” said Subhash of Mahindra Waste to Energy Solutions Ltd. The company has a contract with the Indore MC to operate the plant for 15 years. ROAD CLEANING: Every night, 800 km of main roads are swept by machines, footpaths and road dividers are washed by a water mist. This uses 400 litre water every night, most of it recycled from the three sewage treatment plants set up by the IMC. Internal roads that make up the rest of the 2,200 km are swept, and the waste is collected in gunny bags, collected by vans and taken to the waste processing facility.