Flagging off the Swachhata” campaign, ‘waste to wealth’ concept, the Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) Science & Technology, MoS PMO, Personnel, Public Grievances, Pensions, Atomic Energy and Space, Dr. Jitendra Singh said, “There is now also better mass understanding about the application of innovation and technology for Recycling and Reuse of Waste materials”.

The Union Minister, today while speaking to media said, “After a review and the progress of three weeks of the Swachhata Special Campaign 3.0, it is being implemented in all government offices across the country. The government advocated the trinity of ‘Artificial Intelligence and Robotics along with the Drones 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 added.

Underlining that every bit of garbage is worth its return, Dr 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.

The government has joined hands with the Dehradun based Indian Institute of Petroleum (CSIR-IIP) to develop a ‘repurposed used cooking oil (RUCO)’ van that collects used cooking oil and converts it into biofuel.

The Minister informed that 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.

Government is also monitoring the  progress of  this Special Campaign 3.0. The campaign is monitored on a dedicated portal (https://scdpm.nic.in/) on a daily basis.

DARPG  is taking regular review meetings with nodal officers to keep an eye on 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.

The Science and technology Minister claimed that the government has earned a total revenue of Rs.776 crore in the Special Campaign in the last three years; a large chunk of this revenue, Rs.176 crore earned in the last 20 days of the Special Campaign 3.0. The Campaign is now going on and will finish at the end of the month.