National Conclave on Social Enterprises for Garbage Free Cities: Encouraging Women Entrepreneurs in
- Organizing under Swachh Bharat Mission-Urban 2.0, under the aegis of the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA).
- In collaboration with the Government of Chhattisgarh.
Context
- It is an event to witness the release of “National Capacity Building Framework for Garbage Free Cities” under SBM-Urban 2.0.
- The event will serve as a platform for peer learning for States and Urban Local Bodies (ULBs) on various centralized and decentralized waste management practices.
- It will help build capabilities of relevant stakeholders to strengthen the urban sanitation sector in the country.
Other Participants
- Representatives from nearly 17 States and their ULBs.
- Ex:
- North Eastern States - Assam, Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland,
- Union Territories - Jammu & Kashmir, Chandigarh and Ladakh
- Major States - Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu.
Various Activities to be involved
- The participants: to engage in an on-ground cleanliness drive on the banks of the Mahanadi river, along with NCC cadets.
- To be followed by a visit to the Solid Liquid Resource Management (SLRM) Center at nearby Patan.
- Segregated waste collected from households to be brought to the SLRM center where inorganic (dry/non-bio-degradable) fractions are further sorted into various subcategories.
- To be done for subsequent recycling/processing and value recovery.
- Participants will engage in ‘shramdaan’ at the SLRM center and physically sort some of the dry waste into further fractions.
- It will help sensitize them about the importance of such multiple sorting and segregation for ease of subsequent disposal to recover maximum value from waste.
- The participants will be taken on field visits to a vermi-composting center for demonstrating scientific, value-added processing of segregated wet waste to compost.
- The launch of the theme song ‘Swachhata Jaari Hai’.
Women Participants and Entrepreneurs
- The event will be presenting various women-led waste management initiatives from across the country.
- Examples:
- Hasiru Dala: a Bangalore-based organization works with waste pickers to transform them into waste entrepreneurs.
- Cuttack Municipal Corporation, Odisha: working to economically empower transgender-led self-help groups by engaging them as waste operators.
- Pune’s Red Dot campaign by SWaCH co-operative: working to spread awareness regarding menstrual health, along with safe and sustainable disposal of sanitary waste.
- SHE teams: Tiruchirappalli, Tamil Nadu, women-led self-help groups - set up entrepreneurial ventures for operating and maintaining community toilets in slums, and spreading awareness regarding healthy sanitation and hygiene practices in slum communities.
- Saahas NGO(Gurugram, Haryana): spearheading the ‘Alag Karo Campaign- Har Din Teen Bin’ to create awareness and implement source segregation of municipal solid waste into 3 fractions – wet (biodegradable), dry (non-biodegradable) and domestic hazardous - by residential communities.
Swachh Bharat Mission-Urban: past 7 years statistics
- Largest urban sanitation revolution in the world: harnessed the commitment of 130 crore citizens towards building a ‘Clean India.
- All 35 States and Urban Territories (UTs) are Open Defecation Free (ODF).
- The practice of segregating waste at source is adopted across 87% of wards in the country.
- Waste processing: gone up by nearly 4 times, from 18% in 2014 to 71% at present.
Way Forward
- Enable environment for development of startups and entrepreneurs, including women-led ventures, in the waste management sector.
- Identify innovative solutions across various themes such as:
- Social inclusion,
- Zero dump (solid waste management),
- Plastic waste management,
- Transparency through digital enablement.