Can India Turn Garbage Into Cash?

A southern city pioneers a blueprint for how the country could clean up

- Bibhudatta Pradhan

It’s 6:30 a.m. in the Indian city of Mysuru (formerly known as Mysore), and the streets are filled with the sound of whistles blowing as workers in olive-green aprons and rubber gloves begin a door-to-door search. They’ve come to collect one of the country’s biggest unexploited resources: garbage.

The southern metropolis is in the vanguard of a campaign by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to clean up India and recycle rubbish into compost and electricity. The task is gargantuan, but the approach in Mysuru—which relies heavily on the involvement of civic groups and private companies—may provide a blueprint for how the country can build an economy around trash. “We don’t want waste to be waste. We want to get wealth out of it,” says D.G. Nagaraj, health officer of Mysuru City Corporation, a municipal agency. “Zero landfill is our motto.”

Investment in facilities to turn waste into compost and energy could reach $3 billion by 2027, according to a 2015 report commissioned by Assocham, an umbrella group that represents various industry chambers.