Lieutenant Governor Taranjit Singh Sandhu (L-G) urged replicating Indore's waste management practices in Delhi and shifting the focus from waste disposal to resource recovery, noting that the capital generates 13,000 metric tonnes (t) of municipal waste daily. He made the comments while addressing a one-day brainstorming workshop on municipal solid waste management organised by the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) in collaboration with the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi (IIT-Delhi) at the India International Centre (IIC). The L-G said Delhi should study successful models from India and abroad and adapt them to the scale, density and local conditions of the capital.

He said scientific and sustainable waste management was not merely a cleanliness issue but was closely linked to public health, environmental protection and quality of life, and called for moving beyond collection and landfill disposal towards reducing, reusing and recycling waste and converting it into valuable resources. The L-G emphasised source segregation and urged households to separate wet, dry, sanitary and domestic hazardous waste to improve downstream processing and resource recovery.

Sandhu advised greater use of technology, digital monitoring and data management alongside advanced waste processing systems to make operations more efficient and transparent. He encouraged the deployment of digital tools for tracking collection, monitoring processing plants and generating data to inform policy and investment decisions.

Stressing collective responsibility, the L-G said households, resident welfare associations (RWAs), market associations, industries, institutions, experts and public representatives must work alongside civic bodies rather than treating cleanliness as the sole duty of the municipal corporation. Mayor Pravesh Wahi of Delhi highlighted the need to clear landfill sites, strengthen sanitation infrastructure and deploy new machinery, and proposed developing selected wards as model wards demonstrating best practices in sanitation and waste management. Indore Mayor Pushyamitra Bhargav shared his city's experience and underlined the importance of behavioural change, citizen participation and decentralised initiatives such as Zero Waste Wards, Zero Waste Colonies and Zero Waste Roads.