Business journalism outlet Forbes has spotlighted Punjab’s Suthra Punjab waste system, an eight-month effort that created a single, digitised waste service for nearly 130 million people. The system now handles around 50,000 tons of rubbish every day and is designed to turn waste into power, jobs and emissions cuts.
Punjab’s leadership chose a unique approach to tackle the long-standing waste crisis in the province. Rather than initiating small-scale pilot projects, the government implemented a comprehensive model across the entire province.
For years, only certain areas within cities received sporadic waste collection, while rural regions home to around 70 million individuals spread across approximately 25,000 villages had no official waste disposal service at all.
As garbage accumulated in fields, obstructed drainage systems, and stacked up along riverbanks, the situation escalated into an environmental disaster.
The shift began when the government questioned whether a model working in Lahore could be expanded elsewhere. “When the new government came in, the Chief Secretary asked me: ‘You’ve done well in Lahore – can we develop a cleanliness system for the entire province?’” recalled Babar Sahib Din, CEO of the Lahore Waste Management Company (LWMC), in a conversation with Forbes.
That inquiry prompted the establishment of Suthra Punjab, an initiative aimed at providing reliable waste management services throughout every city and village. With support from political leaders, Sahib Din and his team were charged with creating a cohesive system and implementing it across an expanse of more than 200,000 square kilometres within a matter of months.
A centralized waste authority centered around LWMC was formed to manage operations spanning from large urban centers to isolated villages. “This is rare in our part of the world, where infrastructure gaps between urban and rural areas are huge. For the first time, rural areas were receiving service at the same level as cities,” he said.
What now sets Suthra Punjab apart is its level of digitization. Trucks and bins carry tracking devices that feed live data into a central control room, daily routes are optimised through software, landfill disposal is logged automatically and dashboards monitor contractor performance. “We have developed the world’s largest, fully digitized waste management system under a unified governance structure. It serves 130 million people and converts 50,000 tons of daily waste into electricity and other usable products,” said Sahib Din.
Payments made to private contractors are directly linked to real-time data, which means that any missed routes or inefficient operations are automatically flagged and penalized, thereby decreasing the occurrences of manipulation and “ghost” payments that were common in the previous system.
The financing for Suthra Punjab is structured on a three-pronged model that consists of public funding, modest user charges, and income from energy sales and carbon credits.
The provincial government allocates seed grants for public services like street cleaning, while user fees have been introduced to encourage co-ownership. A third source of revenue comes from climate and energy financing, as the system produces electricity and reduces methane emissions.
All financial transactions are processed through an escrow account managed by the waste authority, which has also facilitated the acquisition of financing from commercial banks. According to the project leaders, the initiative is anticipated to achieve revenue positivity in the upcoming years.
With daily collection now functioning at scale, the focus is shifting to deriving value from waste. A dedicated team is leading the work on recycling, composting, landfill-gas capture and biological treatment of organic waste. Punjab is also pushing industrial-scale waste-to-energy projects, including a 25 MW power plant in Lahore that would pump electricity into the national grid and generate enough power for roughly 50,000 homes.
These facilities generate an estimated 275,000 carbon credits annually by reducing landfill volumes and reducing methane emissions by about 75 percent through gas capture. When combined, these initiatives are expected to prevent around 2 million tons of CO2-equivalent emissions per year.
Eight months into operations, millions of people have regular waste collection for the first time. Streets are visibly cleaner, informal dumps have shrunk and communities that never saw municipal pickup now have steady service. The initiative has also created over 100,000 green jobs, opening opportunities for women and young people, while the clearing of waterways and dump sites has begun to restore local ecosystems.
The project was showcased at COP30 in Brazil as a leading example of integrated waste and climate action. “Suthra Punjab stands as one of the world’s largest and most organised waste management systems,” said Sahib Din.
Reflecting on the pace of the rollout, he added, “If political will is strong and implementers are motivated, any project, at any scale, can be completed in record time.” He noted that the system was designed to evolve: “The system is intentionally flexible after six months of learning, we redesigned 30 percent of it. Flexibility is critical.”
Faraz Khan, Co-founder and Partner of SpectrEco, a strategic partner to Suthra Punjab, attributed much of the success to strong political leadership, the creation of new value through carbon credits and an entrepreneurial management approach.
Governments from Jakarta to Nairobi are now looking at Punjab’s emerging “waste-to-value” model as they confront their own waste and climate challenges.
