Roadmap Launched to make Urban India ‘Garbage ‘Free’

Roadmap Launched to make Urban India ‘Garbage ‘Free’: Relevance

• GS 3: Conservation, environmental pollution and degradation, environmental impact assessment.

Roadmap Launched to make Urban India ‘Garbage ‘Free’: Context

• Recently, Ministry of Housing & Urban Affairs has launched a roadmap to make Urban India ‘Garbage Free’.
• The Ministry has also launched ‘Azadi@75 Star Rating Protocol of Garbage Free Cities- Toolkit 2022′, the most important governance tool of waste management – the Star Rating Protocol for Garbage Free Cities.

Roadmap Launched to make Urban India ‘Garbage ‘Free’: Key points

• The earlier 25 components/ indicators have now been reduced to 24, of which only 16 indicators are mandatory for 1-star and 3-star levels. The remaining 8 indicators are aspirational in nature, and will be relevant for 5-star and 7-star aspirants;
• The multi-step calculation of the previous GFC protocol has now been changed to a single step marking, which will help ULB to easily self-assess themselves for applying;
• The revised protocol is aligned with SBM-U 2.0 priorities, with higher weightages (50%) allotted to Door-to-Door Collection, Source Segregation, Waste processing & Dumpsite remediation;
• The entire process of applying for certification and subsequent assessment have been simplified and made completely digital, paperless; for example, digital declarations, geo-tagged waste-processing facilities, end-to-end digital monitoring of progress;
• Components pertaining to IEC, capacity building, revenue from sale of waste by-products have been added to encourage cities to build an ecosystem to strengthen the waste management system.
• Continuous assessment throughout the year to help cities plan assessment.
• In the recently concluded certification exercise for GFC, nearly 50% of ULBs participated in the certification exercise, of which a total of 299 cities have been certified.
• 9 cities have been rated as 5-star, 143 cities rated as 3-star and 147 cities as 1-star.

Star rating of cities

• The Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MOHUA) has launched the Protocol for Star Rating of Garbage Free cities.
• The star rating conditions have been designed in a way as to enable cities to gradually evolve into a model (7-star) city, with progressive improvements in their overall cleanliness.
• The protocol, with increasing levels of stringency with increasing star rating, will also be aspirational in nature, feeding cities’ ambitions and dreams of becoming an ideal city for its residents, and a role model for other cities to follow.

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