Assam’s Swachh Diwali celebrations lead to innovative ‘Waste to Food’ initiative

DISPUR, Assam: Swachh Bharat Mission-Urban, a flagship programme under the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, is running an eco-friendly campaign across the country called ‘Swachh Diwali, Shubh Diwali’. The campaign encourages the use of locally made products, donating unused or old items to RRR Centres, and using eco-friendly alternatives to single-use plastics.

In Assam, people traditionally light earthen lamps on banana trees and leaves at the entrances of residential and commercial establishments. However, the stems of the banana tree used on Diwali night become waste the next day. To tackle this, the Swachh Bharat Mission-Urban team in Assam has adopted a unique waste management process.

To ensure post-Diwali cleanliness, Assam has adopted the principle of ‘3 Rs’ – Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle – to transform waste into food. The stems and leaves of banana trees left unused after Diwali will be handed over to national parks around urban local bodies for use as fodder for elephants. Where there are no national parks in the vicinity, the citizens will cut the banana trees into small pieces and hand them over to the urban local bodies for disposal.

From there, the municipal staff will hand over the stems of these trees to cow shelters or ‘waste to compost’ pits located in the centre. Currently, there are 104 central compost pits at various places and over 6,000 domestic composting pits to eliminate such waste.