A journey from Crisis to Success - Waste management in Thrissur City

When we launched Thrissur City Connect (TCC) in July 2021, we knew we wanted to create something different. An online program that would help young adults re-establish their connection with Thrissur beyond just the familiarity of growing up here. Not the romantic aspects of Thrissur's cultural heritage or its famous festivities, but something more rooted in its past and present - more about livelihoods, the history, the gendered experiences of the city and thereby facilitating conversations on what we want the future to be like for our city. 

My journey into co-creating Learning City Thrissur began from a waste audit we had done in Thrissur in the year 2018. Waste management – the unglamorous yet the most essential, and most revealing aspect of how a city actually functions inspired me to co-create this city-based facilitation platform.

This conviction led us to include a dedicated session on waste management in the two editions of Thrissur City Connect so far (first from July 2-30, 2021 and second from June 3-July 5, 2022). Through interactive explorations covering everything from local history and active citizenry to pop culture and gendered city experiences, we wanted participants to look at Thrissur through multiple lenses. The topic on waste management became the cornerstone – facilitating city-based and context-based explorations, learnings, and actions which could be explored through our immediate surroundings. 

The impact was immediate and tangible. After the first edition in 2021, one of the participants, Ann Peter, was so moved by learning about waste management challenges that she persuaded her Panchayat member to ensure proper waste collection in their area. This wasn't theoretical learning – this was civic engagement sparked by understanding how their city actually worked.

Snapshot from the session on waste management during the second edition of Thrissur City Connect, June 2022.

But here's the thing: the story we shared with our TCC participants wasn't a current success story. It was a historical case study from 2018, based on research conducted during a pivotal moment in Thrissur's waste management journey. By July 2022, when we were preparing for TCC2, the waste management landscape had evolved, presenting new challenges and opportunities that made this exploration even more relevant.

In 2018, when Ashik Krishnan and I conducted the waste audit, the city had over 11,000 households and commercial establishments receiving door to door waste collection services. A dedicated workforce, mostly women, would sort waste into 14 different categories. What was once a nightmare for the city was slowly becoming a replicable model for decentralised waste management. This journey wasn’t a result of an overnight success, but the story that was churned out by the smart work of some people with perseverance to ensure a cleaner city for themselves and for those around. 

Thrissur became a corporation in the year 2000 and this gave high hopes to people of the city - a promise of better civic amenities arrived with the municipality becoming a corporation. With almost no change, the waste dumping ground for the sprawling urban area of 101.42 square kilometers continued to be Laloor for 11 long years. In 2011, owing to relentless efforts by the residents of Laloor panchayat, the corporation was forced to shut down the unscientific dumping ground citing the court’s findings that the land had become highly polluted and unsafe for human habitation. 

There was no plan B for Thrissur to manage its waste. 

A municipal worker remembers the initial days as the city drowning in its own waste. There was absolutely no alternative waste collection or disposal system.

This is when Mr. Seby, the then Health Inspector of Thrissur Corporation stepped in as a catalyst to lead the transformation of the city’s waste management. Mr. Seby saw the crisis as an opportunity and devised a system to decentralise the system completely. The first move towards change was to set up 34 dry waste collection centres across the wards. Hence, instead of finding a solution all at once, the plan focused on a vital process - segregation at source. The now-famous, blue and green bin system - blue for dry waste and green for wet waste was introduced. It wasn’t an easy journey: an entire city had to be informed day in and day out to change their decades-old habit of dumping all the waste together. 

With forward looking sustainable solutions comes sustainable livelihoods that ensure their work gets carried forward. Partnering with Kudumbashree, Kerala’s women’s self-help group network, they worked together to create employment opportunities in the waste management sector. Starting with only 5 dedicated members in the year 2012, they successfully became a team of 75 by 2018.

Centering around the vision of viewing waste as a resource, they created a waste segregation centre in Pallikulam. Workers were trained to sort materials into 14 different categories - from PET bottles and footwear to coconut shells and multi-layered plastic packages which would later get pulled into recycling channels. They also implemented the ‘Thumboormozhi’ organic waste treatment plan in some areas, understanding the need for different solutions.  

An important facilitator of the decentralisation plan was Ms. Sheeja, the Kudumbashree convener who has been working on the various transformative initiatives from the very start. In 2017 when Mr. Seby left Thrissur owing to a transfer in job, it marked the beginning of a unique bureaucratic handover: Sheeja took charge, marking grassroots leadership taking charge of a system they had helped build. 

Ashik and I with Ms. Sheeja (2nd from the right) and her colleague during our waste audit in June 2018.

Sheeja, the master operator, came with fresh perspectives and understanding of the daily challenges faced by her collection and segregation teams. Sheeja focused on optimising the operations through relationship building and empathy. “Sheeja knows everyone by their name, she knows who is good at what, and that makes all the difference”, said one of the workers at the segregation centre. Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the city’s transformation is the human story of perseverance and innovation. By 2018, this core team had grown to 14 members who would eventually become the office bearers and team leaders of the expanded operation.

Understanding different waste management models from Ms. Sheeja, 2018

The growth pattern tells its own story:

• 2012: 5 founding members (the believers)

• 2014: 14 core team members (the foundation builders)

• 2018: 75 operational staff (the full-scale workforce)

This wasn't just employment creation – it was capacity building at the community level. The original 14 members didn't just get promoted; they became trainers, supervisors, and mentors for new recruits. They created an institutional memory that survived leadership transitions and policy changes.

The workforce that emerged created a new structure for waste management in the city where the policy implementation and regulatory oversight was undertaken by health inspectors, primary collection and segregation operations looked into by Kudumbashree workers, transportation and logistical support provided by municipal workers and community engagement and awareness programs led by the Paurasamidhi workers. 

The workforce structure that emerged reflects the complexity of modern waste management:

• Health Inspectors: Policy implementation and regulatory oversight

• Kudumbashree Workers: Primary collection and segregation operations

• Municipal Workers: Transportation and logistical support

• Paurasamithi Workers: Community engagement and awareness programs

Each group brought different skills and perspectives, creating a comprehensive system that could handle everything from household collection to commercial establishment coordination.

By 2018, the system was serving 7,000 households and 4,000 commercial establishments – a total of 11,000 service points across the corporation. Individual workers were processing an average of 48 sacks of segregated waste per person per week, earning ₹300 per day through direct bank transfers.

But numbers only tell part of the story. The real transformation was cultural: Thrissur had shifted from seeing waste as a problem to viewing waste management as a community responsibility. The heroes of this story weren't just the leaders who initiated change, but the citizens who embraced it and the workers who sustained it.