From Sarees to Sustainability: How Rural Women Are Leading Odisha’s Waste Revolution
High in the undulating hills of Odisha, as the morning sun spills golden light across red-earth roads and dense green canopies, a quiet revolution is in motion. It’s not carried by machines or mandates, but by a determined brigade of women in colourful sarees and work gloves, riding tricycles and battery-operated vehicles with grit in their hearts and a mission on their minds.
They are the Swachhta Sathis—the sanitation companions of Sundargarh. Armed with nothing more than their training, tenacity, and deep-rooted sense of duty, these women have become the front-liners of a grassroots movement that is rewriting the rules of rural waste management.
And it all begins at the doorstep.
Turning Households into Habits
Each morning, the Swachhta Sathis move from home to home, encouraging families to sort their waste at the source. What was once a foreign concept in these villages has become routine: plastics separated from organics, recyclables kept apart from the rest.
With warmth and persistence, these women have transformed waste into a conversation. Village meetings, street plays, and door-to-door chats have become the new normal—tools of transformation wielded not from podiums, but from the heart.
Waste with a Way Forward
Once collected, the waste doesn’t just disappear—it embarks on a second life. At local segregation sheds and Material Recovery Facilities (MRFs), the Swachhta Sathis sort every piece with care and precision.
High-value plastics like PET bottles are sent off to registered recyclers, reborn into everyday items. The lower-value, often overlooked plastics—like those stubborn multilayered snack wrappers—don’t go to waste either. They find use in road construction and even as alternative fuels in cement kilns, closing the loop in a truly circular economy.
As of now, over 360 metric tonnes of plastic waste has been processed under this initiative. And this is no fleeting clean-up—it’s a self-sustaining ecosystem, built with purpose and maintained through community ownership.
The Man Behind the Mission
Spearheading this movement is IAS officer Manoj Satyawan Mahajan, the 2019-batch collector of Sundargarh.
When he began his field visits, he encountered the reality many had learned to live with—waste dumped on roadsides, floating in water bodies, and burnt in backyards. People weren’t indifferent—they were uninformed and unequipped.
That changed in 2021 with the birth of Aama Sundargarh Swachh Sundargarh. Supported technically by UNICEF and designed under the Urban Rural Convergence model, the initiative became a blueprint for a new kind of rural waste management—community-owned, women-powered, and environmentally focused.
With over 1,682 villages and 3.6 lakh households now participating, nearly 70% of Sundargarh’s rural population has been impacted.
Women Rising with Waste
But perhaps the most inspiring facet of this initiative is the 470 rural women who now stand at its forefront.
From mastering the mechanics of shredders and balers to managing operations at decentralised centres, these women have taken complete ownership of the waste ecosystem. Many, like Monika Minz from Kacharu Gram Panchayat, once worked as daily-wage labourers. Today, Monika earns ₹6,725 per month, begins her rounds at 7 a.m., and ends her workday with a sense of pride and purpose.
“The community calls me Swachhta Didi. I feel like I’m doing something meaningful,” she says. Her income supports her children’s education, and her schedule allows her to balance work and family life—a rare and precious combination.
And Monika isn’t alone. Across villages, women who once had no stable income now walk with confidence and dignity. They are not just workers—they are role models, environmentalists, and community leaders.
Cleaner Villages, Stronger Futures
The district’s success hasn’t gone unnoticed. Sundargarh has been recognised as the best-performing district in plastic waste management under the Swachh Bharat Mission (Gramin).
What started as a problem of sanitation has evolved into a story of empowerment, innovation, and environmental resilience. With an investment of around ₹14 crore, the district has built not just infrastructure—but a movement that thrives on people, partnerships, and purpose.
For Manoj Mahajan, this is more than a job. “It’s close to my heart,” he says. “This initiative blends environmental stewardship with economic upliftment. It’s about showing that rural communities can manage waste as effectively—if not more so—than urban ones.”
What’s Next?
With the success of the model, the district aims to expand. By next year, over 700 Swachhta Sathis are expected to join the movement, doubling down on sustainability while transforming the very notion of what it means to be a sanitation worker in rural India.
Because in Sundargarh, waste is no longer a problem—it’s a possibility. A possibility for cleaner villages, dignified livelihoods, and women at the helm of change.
And it all began with a simple question: What if we empowered those who’ve always been overlooked to clean up what’s always been ignored?
Turns out, the answer was already in the heart of the village—riding a tricycle, wearing gloves, and redefining what leadership looks like.