Clad in green and trudging the streets of a sleepy town with their rickshaws painted in bright green and red are the women of Ambikapur in Chhattisgarh who have become an unmistakable part of the city’s identity.

Women are not only making money out of garbage but have set a precedent in the Swachh Bharat campaign by making the town, housing a population of over 1,25,000, waste free. Ambikapur is the first town in the state to adopt Solid Liquid Resource Management (SLRM) method to solve the problem of urban waste. “The model of cleanliness adopted in Ambikapur would ...