Ten years ago, in 2016, SwachaGraha began with a simple yet powerful invitation: “Start a green spot.” It started as a call to action for individuals, families, and neighbourhoods to look at waste differently, not as garbage, but as a resource: one compost bin, one garden, and one shared meal at a time, to turn everyday habits into acts of care for the planet.
- Compost: The first ‘green spot’ begins right in your kitchen, where vegetable peels and food scraps are transformed into nutrient-rich compost.
- Grow: The second ‘green spot’ takes root in your garden, balcony, or terrace, where that compost nourishes healthy, homegrown food.
- Cook: The third ‘green spot’ comes alive in your kitchen again when you bring your harvest to the table, fresh, wholesome, and waste-free.
The beginning: A late-night idea that became a citywide campaign
It all began with a late-night call in 2015. Around 11 pm, I received an excited call from Lalitha Mondreti, a resident of Bellandur, brimming with an idea, simple yet transformative. Her vision was to inspire micro actions that could spark macro change. She believed that if every home, every lane, and every institution could start one small green spot by composting using a khamba (Daily Dump’s composting product) or even a bucket, we could begin to shift the way our city viewed and managed waste.
Following many midnight conversations and our regular Tuesday meetings at the Solid Waste Management Roundtable (SWMRT), which was then housed at the Anonymous Indian Charitable Trust, that idea started to take shape. It was hard not to get caught in Lalitha’s infectious enthusiasm. The first milestone was to plan the SwachaGraha website, followed by the campaign’s look and feel, its logo and colour palette, developing a brand protocol for all digital assets, and choosing a brand ambassador. After deliberations, we decided that Vani Murthy would be the face of the campaign.
Simultaneously, work began on preparing workshop modules, website content, developing school engagement programmes, user and stakeholder protocols, engagement with vendors, technical partner, printers, media, and more.
Several individuals, who were not part of SWMRT stepped in and strengthened the campaign’s foundation: Kabir Arora, who drafted a compelling concept note; Jeevan Claude Dsouza, creator of the campaign’s memorable jingle; Anil Annaih, who produced a short film capturing SwachaGraha’s spirit; Volunteers Shyamala and Manoga Shastry, who amplified social media outreach and Radio Active 90.4, which launched 24 radio episodes narrated by Beula Anthony and RJ Priyanka, sharing citizens’ composting journeys.
Read more: Bengaluru’s composting fairs show how easy it is to grow your own vegetables – Citizen Matters
Growing roots: Homes, communities, and city governance
As the campaign gained momentum, many citizens embraced home composting. Volunteers from SWMRT and Bangalore Eco Team approached the then Commissioner of the erstwhile BBMP, Manjunath Prasad, who not only supported the campaign but began composting at home himself.
This leadership endorsement paved the way for ‘Compost Santhes’, community fairs showcasing different composting methods, tools, and resources. Between February 2017 and December 2018, 49 Compost Santhes were conducted across the city, and then sadly, COVID-19 put the brakes on the campaign.
Although the Karnataka State Urban Solid Waste Management Strategy 2020 institutionalised the Compost Santhes. Clause 4.5 (ii) states that “Every effort must be made by the ULB to showcase sustainable options that are available at the decentralised level to keep the general public informed on best practices for waste management. For example, activities such compost santhe have been effective in promoting best practices and community engagement at the ward level for management of wet waste. Such activities should be held at regular intervals. The ULB should seek the participation and cooperation of NGOs, SWM experts and practitioners, and RWAs and extend support through financial and institutional resources.”
This policy nod cemented Swachagraha’s impact as a citizen-led idea influencing state-level strategy, and attempts were made to restart the ‘Compost Santhes’ in 2021. Yet, it was not the same, and gradually mixed waste collection became the norm.
SwachaGraha 2.0: Scaling knowledge, building connections
By 2018, SwachaGraha entered its second phase, focused on learning, innovation, and closing the loop between urban waste and rural soil. The SwachaGraha Version 2.0 has set out to usher in a composting revolution with many new initiatives — from the SwachaGraha Kalika Kendra, a composting learning centre to the SwachaGraha Compost Connect, a citizen–farmer connect initiative.
SwachaGraha Kalika Kendra: India’s first compost learning centre
Opened on December 15, 2018, in HSR Layout’s Sector 4 Park, the SwachaGraha Kalika Kendra is a first-of-its-kind living classroom for decentralised waste management. The centre offers exciting and educational live exhibits of more than 20 composting models, including a fully functional biogas unit, and a chance to explore a host of home gardening solutions for people of all age groups. It also offers guided demonstrations and volunteer-led learning sessions.
A collaboration between BBMP (now Greater Bengaluru Authority), which owns the space; SWMRT (knowledge partner), and the HSR Citizens Forum (volunteer driver), the centre stands as a model for community-led environmental infrastructure.
Read more: Bengaluru’s Swachagraha Kalika Kendra sets an example in community-led composting – Citizen Matters
SwachaGraha compost connect: Linking cities to soil
Conceived by Savita Hiremath, SwachaGraha Compost Connect aimed to link urban compost producers with rural farmers, restoring organic matter to the soil where it belongs. While this campaign built the necessary connections, and there is a WhatsApp group, this campaign has slowed down considerably. An important learning — such systemic connections require dedicated funding and regulatory support. Volunteer-driven and volunteer-run efforts alone cannot scale city-to-village circularity.
Ten years later: What SwachaGraha taught us
What made SwachaGraha different was its tone, not of blame, but of belief. It was never just about waste. It was about ownership. About citizens realising that clean cities start at home, and sustainability is not a government programme, it’s a way of life.
SwachaGraha rests on a simple truth: waste and food are deeply interconnected. The food we eat creates organic waste, which can become compost, which in turn nourishes the soil to grow new food. This closed loop reduces methane emissions, cuts carbon footprints, and restores our connection to the earth.
While governments at every level struggle to manage waste, SwachaGraha empowers citizens to take responsibility, transforming waste from a problem into a resource. It resonates with India’s Swachh Bharat Abhiyan and Mission LiFE, and supports the nation’s climate commitments through local action. Bengaluru’s culture of civic activism made it fertile ground for such a shift. The idea being that: “If every household composts and grows even a small portion of its own food, the city could turn into one vast urban kitchen garden, preventing waste dumping, enriching the soil, and supporting farmers in nearby areas.”
Looking ahead
However, as the campaign steps into its next decade, and to truly scale what SwachaGraha set in motion, we need a shift from volunteer-driven effort to institutionalised systems that support composting, urban gardening, and circular food pathways.
- Education and behaviour change at scale: This includes bringing composting literacy into every school, teacher training and NSS activities, regular ‘Compost Santhes’ institutionalised with annual calendars and a continuous city-wide public campaign to normalise composting, that is not reserved for occasional observance days.
- Policy interventions that translate on the ground: This includes enforcing mandatory source segregation, implementing compost first policies, by prioritising decentralised wet waste management, bringing back city-compost policy; legal recognition of community gardens, as part of urban planning, similar to parks and civic amenities and zoning reforms that formally allocate underutilised land for community gardens and composting hubs.
- Strengthening waste-pathways infrastructure for wet waste and garden waste: This includes micro-processing centres at the ward level for composting/biogas and street leaf litter; setting standards for compost quality to be used in agriculture and banning mixed waste collection.
- Dedicated funding: This includes permanent municipal budget allocation for community composting infrastructure across all areas, including low-income settlements, compost santhes and public education and garden maintenance, and expanding the compost connect program, that ensures surplus compost generated in the city is transported to farmers, post testing; availability of small grants for RWAs, citizen groups and schools to run decentralised composting units, and earmarking CSR funds for these activities.
- Building market linkages for urban compost: This includes setting up of aggregation points across the city, transport subsidies, farmer partnerships, buy-back programs and compulsory use of city compost in parks and gardens. In addition strengthening standards and certifications and supporting initiatives that collect and redistribute excess compost.
- Standard Operating Procedures for urban land use and regeneration frameworks: This includes public mapping of vacant plots, medians, government lands not in use, for conversion into community-managed gardens and food forests. This could be through a term licences/agreements to citizen groups so community gardens aren’t displaced by short-term political pressures.
[This was first published on Waste Frames and has been republished with minimal edits with the author’s permission.]