Swachhata campaign has generated awareness about "waste to wealth" concept: Jitendra Singh

New Delhi [India], October 25 (ANI): Union Minister of State for Science and Technology Jitendra Singh on Wednesday said that the "Swachhata" campaign has generated awareness about the 'waste to wealth' concept.
There is now also a better mass understanding of the application of innovation and technology for Recycling and Reuse of Waste materials for productive means, the Union Minister added.
Jitendra Singh was speaking at a press conference here today after reviewing the progress of Week 3 of the Swachhata Special Campaign 3.0 being implemented in all Government offices of India.
Jitendra Singh advocated the trinity of Artificial Intelligence, Robotics and Drones in order to segregate waste intelligently and for swift disposal of resultant materials.
"Now, if we can have an Artificial Intelligence driven module which can segregate the solid and liquid waste, then we have the robot which would carry this and load it onto the drone and then the drone would automatically fly and carry it to the respective destination," he said.
Underlining that every bit of garbage is worth its return, Jitendra Singh said the Department of Science and Technology, Technology Development Board and CSIR recently launched the 'Recycling on Wheels' bus, which can generate Waste to Wealth at different spots due to its mobility.
Jitendra Singh said the Dehra Dun-based Indian Institute of Petroleum (CSIR-IIP) has jointly developed a Repurposed Used Cooking Oil (RUCO) van that collects used cooking oil and converts it into biofuel.
Jitendra Singh said the Government has earned a total revenue of Rs.776 crore just by disposing of scrap in the three Special Campaigns undertaken by all Government offices across the country in the last three years. A large chunk of this revenue, Rs.176 crore has been earned in the last 20 days of the Special Campaign 3.0 now underway.
"So our pace of generating revenue is also increasing. It means now we have learnt the skill of making wealth out of this...That means we are improving on our scale, now we are looking forward to the saturation point," he said.
Jitendra Singh said thanks to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the Swachhata campaign has become a mass movement since he initiated the idea during his first Independence Day address from the ramparts of the Red Fort on 15 August 2014.
"In the first year of the Swachhata campaign more than 4 lakh toilets were constructed, empowering women with 'Suvidha, Svasthya and Samman'. Second year, the Special Campaign focused on the disposal of lakhs of junk files, which freed up precious office space for productive use, and cleaning e-scrap. And the Special Campaign 3.0 is now focused on wealth generation from waste," he said.
Jitendra Singh said nearly 86 lakh sq. ft of office Space has been made available in three weeks of the Special Campaign 3.0.
Jitendra Singh commended the Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances (DARPG), being the nodal agency, while reviewing the progress of Week 3 of Special Campaign 3.0.
Jitendra Singh said massive participation is being witnessed across Ministries/Departments and their fields/areas. He urged Ministries/Departments to adopt a saturation approach in the implementation of the Campaign to cover all outstation offices/defence establishments and PSUs in all parts of the country.
The Progress of Special Campaign 3.0 is monitored on a dedicated portal(https://scdpm.nic.in/) on a daily basis. Regular review meetings are held under the Chairmanship of Secretary, DARPG with nodal officers to review the progress of the campaign. Special Campaign 3.0 concludes on October 31st, 2023 with the beginning of the Evaluation phase in the first week of November. (ANI)