Forbes hails ‘Suthra Punjab’ as blueprint for global waste management

WEB DESK: In a landmark feature, Forbes magazine has lauded Pakistan’s ‘Suthra Punjab’ (Clean Punjab) initiative as the world’s largest integrated waste management system and a transformative model for impact leadership. The program, which addressed 75 years of neglect in just eight months, now provides daily waste collection services to Punjab’s 130 million residents, collecting roughly 50,000 tons of waste daily.

Faced with a mounting crisis of polluted streets and waterways, provincial leadership tasked Lahore Waste Management Company CEO Babar Sahib Din with a singular mission: create a unified, dependable waste service for every city and village. The result is a fully digitised, province-wide system that defies conventional wisdom by scaling immediately, bypassing the small-pilot phase.

The initiative’s success is powered by a unique public-private partnership and a three-tier financing model blending modest user fees, government grants, and new revenue from waste-to-energy projects and carbon credits. A central technological innovation is its real-time, IoT-enabled tracking. Every truck and bin is equipped with sensors, feeding data into an AI-optimised system that automates contractor payments based on performance, virtually eliminating corruption.

The impacts are profound. Over 100,000 green jobs have been created, streets are clean, and pollution has plummeted. The program is now entering a “waste-to-value” phase, with projects ranging from recycling and composting to a 25 MW waste-to-energy plant that will power 50,000 homes and generate carbon credits.

Showcased at COP30 as an integrated climate action model, Suthra Punjab is a case study in ‘audacious’ leadership. It demonstrates how strong political will, adaptive management, and stakeholder engagement can rapidly turn a crisis into an opportunity for public health, economic growth, and climate resilience, a playbook now being studied by cities from Jakarta to Nairobi.