Indore Municipal Corporation (IMC) has been ranked number one among the cleanest cities of the country. The state capital Bhopal ranked second. Madhya Pradesh has made a record of sorts by getting 20 cities in the list of top 100 among the cities which participated in the ‘Swachchta Sarvekshan -2017’ contest conducted in 500 cities across India.
Eight cities of Madhya Pradesh—Bhopal, Indore, Gwalior, Ujjain, Khargone, Sagar, Rewa and Pithampur—figure in the top 25 cities and towns in the country.
Indore, along with the other top cities, who got the ranking, were declared open defecation free (ODF). Indore got the maximum 1807 marks out of 2000, while Bhopal got 1800 due to its system of solid waste management. The door-to-door collection of garbage in the two cities fetched maximum marks. Indore has one of the best solid waste management systems.
Indore municipal corporation ran an extensive awareness programme before launching the solid waste management programme. A special two-day campaign was run to educate people about storing soaked and dry waste in separate polythene bags to achieve the 100 per cent target of segregation of waste at the source.
These bags were collected by municipal sanitation workers and transported to trenching ground at Devguradia. At Devguradia, a power plant of 11 MW is being set up to use the 300 mt tonnes of waste, out of the over 800 metric tones produced.
In order to achieve the target of waste collection, the body increased the number of vehicles collecting garbage from houses and also placed many new garbage bins in the city.