Swachhata Drive Earns Rs 4,085 Crore: How Scrap Sales Funded Space Missions

The minister also disclosed that another significant outcome of the campaign was that 231.75 lakh square feet of space has been freed for productive utility which was earlier choked and blocked with waste material, worn out furniture and scrap.

"Interestingly, the amount of over Rs 4,085 crore earned by selling off the scrap could be the total budget of one mega Space mission or multiple Chandrayaan Space missions, while the total space freed was enough to bring up a huge mall or some other massive structure for economic activity," the minister said.

Elaborating further, Dr Singh recalled that in his very first Independence Day address Prime Minister Narendra Modi had given a call for Swachhata from the ramparts of the Red Fort. Soon, this turned into a mass campaign and over four lakh toilets were built in the first year itself. Simultaneously, he said, a campaign was taken up to clear the junk of redundant office files, broken furniture etc. from the government offices.

He said in 2021, on the advice of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, it was decided that while Swachhata was an ongoing continuous movement, during the month of October beginning from the Gandhi Jayanti, 2nd October up to 31st October, there would be a dedicated Special Swachhata campaign in which all the government Ministries and departments would be expected to actively participate and prepare regular reports of the tasks achieved.

For the last three years or so, Dr. Singh observed that besides the conventional scrap, there was also a lot of electronic scrap in the offices which could be disposed of not only to generate revenue for the State but could also be converted through recycling to generate wealth from waste.

He explained that at the end of the Special Swachhata campaign 4.0 last year nearly Rs. 3,300 crore had been earned to which Rs. 788.53 crore was added through this year's Special Campaign 5.0 lasting from October 2 to October 31, 2025. As a result, the total amount earned, so far, is over Rs 4,085 crore.

This year's Special Swachhata campaign 5.0, Dr. Singh said, also took place at a time when extensive "Waste to Wealth" activity has been undertaken by the Ministry of Science & Technology. This, for example, includes recycling of hospital waste through a technology developed by CSIR-NIIST Thiruvanathapuram and deployed at AIIMS New Delhi, recycling of cooked oil undertaken by CSIR-IIP Dehradun and use of steel sludge for road construction through technology developed by CSIR-CRRI New Delhi, he added.

- IANS