Swachh Bharat 2.0 Will Address The Plastic Problem Head-On

According to a strategic plan that will guide the second phase of the mission, which is expected to extend until 2029, the Modi government will reposition its flagship cleanliness programme, Swachh Bharat, to address the scourge of plastic trash.

So far, the primary goal of the Swachh Bharat Mission has been to provide a toilet for every family and make India an open-defecation-free (ODF) nation by October 2, 2019.

The Swachh Bharat goal will now be aimed at recycling and managing garbage, especially so-called single-use plastic, besides its focus on cleanliness. An official familiar with the strategy who spoke on the condition of anonymity stated that the government will use the same set of tactics as were used for the ODF drive. On August 15, Prime Minister Narendra Modi urged an end to single-use plastic within three years.

The administration has opted against enacting a total ban on single-use plastic products. Instead, under Swachh Bharat, every village panchayat and local body will have access to facilities for managing solid and liquid waste, similar to toilets.

To combat open defecation, the government used a high-octane public campaign to influence behaviour and engaged local “motivators.” The reformulated objectives of Swachh Bharat will include a similar bottom-up strategy for recycling and segregating garbage, such as organic material and used plastics.

As the cleanest city in India, according to Swachh Bharat rankings, Indore will serve as a model for managing urban garbage, and Tamil Nadu’s village-level waste recycling concept might apply to other parts of rural India. After working with state governments and many stakeholders, the department of sanitation created the strategy within the Jal Shakti ministry, which is in charge of the Swachh Bharat Mission.

Speaking at a historic occasion on Wednesday in Ahmedabad, Modi claimed rural India had declared itself to be free of open defecation, achieving the main goal of the Swachh Bharat drive he had started on October 2, 2014. 44 percent of Indians, mostly in the countryside, defecated in the open in 2015, according to World Bank data.

In order to implement what is now known as ODF Plus, “local governments, policymakers, implementers, and other key stakeholders” would be guided by a framework outlined in the new Swachh Bharat plan.

In addition to sanitation, it concentrates on the management of three types of trash: organic, plastic, grey water management, and black water waste. Black-water waste, in sanitation, refers to faecal sludge, while organic waste is any bio-origin residual material. We refer to wastewater from other domestic uses as “grey water.”

Gram Panchayats in Tamil Nadu have placed garbage segregation facilities in each village. Besides other state monies, some of them use money from the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme to operate these waste management systems, according to a second official.

To collect, sort, and direct waste to approved recyclers, panchayats pay commercial companies who administer the facilities a fee.

In order to improve sanitation, the government went on a building rampage across the nation, erecting 100 million toilets in rural areas, encompassing over 500,000 settlements. According to a World Bank-monitored sanitation survey, 90.4 percent of villages are now free of open defecation, and 93.1 percent of rural households have access to toilets.

According to experts, installing toilets hasn’t completely eradicated open defecation. In north India, over 23% of individuals who had access to toilets still used open defecation, according to a report released this year by a team of demographers under the direction of Dianne Coffer, a visiting researcher at the Indian Statistical Institute.

Environmental experts claim that trash management and public education were the keys to reducing the use of plastics, but India needs to outlaw at least some varieties of single-use plastics. The prohibition of specific single-use plastics with zero potential for recycling is the only option. According to Dinesh Raj Bandella of the Centre for Science and Environment, relying just on recycling won’t be able to fix the issue.