Indore Municipal Corporation 1st urban body in country to get EPR credit by recycling single-use plastic: Official

Indore: Indore Municipal Corporation (IMC) has become the first urban body in the country to get the Extended Producers Responsibility (EPR) credit by recycling the banned single-use plastic items after seizing them, a senior civic official claimed.

Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan has congratulated the residents and local administration on this achievement of the IMC.

Notably, Indore was adjudged India's cleanest city for the sixth time in a row last year in the central government's annual cleanliness survey.

"Single-use plastic is completely banned in the city. We have seized about eight tonnes of such plastic in the recent past and stopped it from getting circulated. We recycled this plastic stock at a plant run under the public private partnership (PPP) model,” IMC Commissioner Harshika Singh told PTI on Tuesday.

With this recycling, the IMC got a credit worth Rs 8,100 on the EPR portal of the Central Pollution Control Board, she said.

According to Singh, IMC is the first registered urban body in the country to earn credit on the EPR portal for recycling the seized plastic.

CM Chouhan congratulated the civic body on the achievement and in a statement said, "As per the wishes of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, efforts are being made to promote a circular economy in Madhya Pradesh." An IMC official said on an average, 1,162 tonnes of solid waste is generated every day in Indore, which includes about 164 tonnes of plastic waste.

This waste is collected under different categories from every doorstep in the city by civic vehicles and disposed of the same day in the plant being run under the PPP model, the official said.