The Directorate of Rural Sanitation, Department of Rural Development and Panchayati Raj has achieved yet another milestone as all villages of Jammu and Kashmir have been declared as ODF Plus. The achievement of 100% ODF Plus milestone is significant as it goes beyond constructing and use of toilets towards cleanliness by managing either Grey water or Solid Waste in each village.
In the journey of a village to achieve the condition where it is visually clean and has systems to process both solid and liquid waste, it has to pass through three stages; ODF plus Aspiring, ODF plus rising and ODF plus Model.
A village is ODF Aspiring when it has mechanisms to deal with either solid or liquid waste apart from ODF sustainability whereas it becomes rising when the system to deal with both solid and liquid waste are in place. Finally when the village has achieved a condition where it is visually clean with minimal litter and stagnant water apart from the solid and liquid waste management and adequate IEC activities, it is declared as Model.
As of now JK UT has 4473 ODF plus Aspiring villages, 1855 ODF plus Rising and 322 ODF plus Model villages. All have achieved the ODF Plus status. In its attempt to make all villages ODF Plus the department has taken many initiatives. For grey water management i.e. water generated from kitchen, bathing etc, soak pits, magic and leach pits have been developed by the department at household and community level. Till date 349687 individual soak pits have been constructed by the department so far. For Biodegradable waste management individual and community compost have been constructed. 115502 compost pits have been constructed either by the department or by people themselves in their households. People are being encouraged to segregate dry and wet waste and process wet waste in compost pits.
GOBARdhan (Galvanising Organic Bio Agro Resources) launched by the government through Department of Drinking Water and Sanitation to ensure cleanliness in villages by converting bio-waste including cattle waste, kitchen leftovers, crop residue and market waste to improve the lives of villagers. While two such projects are already functional in Jammu and Kashmir, 18 more such projects are in the final stages of completion.
Door to Door collection of waste is now something which has become prevalent in almost all panchayats of Jammu and Kashmir. Through involvement of locals, NGOs, expert agencies, waste is being collected from households and segregated with bailers, shredders, for its final disposal.
The segregated waste at the moment is being managed through recyclers, rag pickers, linkages with ULBs etc. However, PWMUs are being established in each district, some of which are in the final stages of completion. The plastic in these centres would be cleaned, shredded, bailed for its final disposal.
