Dawa Chhoden Bhutia is on her toes since the early hours of the day to run the operation of a Material Recovery Facility (MRF) at Phadamchen, a village in East Sikkim district. Bhutia recently gave up her duties as the panchayat chief—and is a ward member of the panchayat—but she continues to ensure that the village waste gets collected before the trucks arrive to pick it up. Phadamchen was awarded the title of the cleanest village in Sikkim by the state government in 2023, thanks to the efforts of Bhutia and nearly 17 other women who support her in the clean-up process.

Nestled in the lap of the Pangolakha Wildlife Sanctuary, this misty village sits at an altitude of over 8,200 feet and is home to about 300 families. Tourists exploring the Silk Route — the ancient trading route between India and Tibet —make a pit stop here on their way from Zuluk. The village has also gained popularity as a destination among birdwatchers keen to sight important bird species found in the region.

Lamu Doma, a homestay owner and an active member of Bhutia’s group, recalls that the clean-up initiative started in 2017 when Dawa and a team from WWF-India began sensitising the village about the major threats to the wildlife of the area. The amount of food and material waste being dumped in the open attracted brown bears and smaller mammals, often leading to conflict with humans and feral dogs. The women decided to form a group that would help in collecting this waste, sorting it, and storing the plastic waste at a Material Recovery Facility to repurpose in in the future.

With support from WWF-India and the State Bank of India Foundation (SBIF), the women have established an efficient process where every household collects its waste and delivers it to the Material Recovery Facility. Each household segregates its plastic waste, washes it, and hands it over to the MRF for processing. The village now has a compost pit too for the wet waste that gets collected.

After getting the households onboard, the women went on to sensitise the taxi drivers and homestay owners about collecting their waste and handing it over to the team instead of dumping it on the road. The campaign has been so successful that its effects have spilled over to nearby villages, which are now undertaking waste management voluntarily.

But it wasn’t always easy. Looking back at her early days, Lamu Doma says no one took them seriously in the beginning. “Our family members would not even mention our work to relatives and friends until the results started showing. Recently, when I got to know that my son bought a pack of potato chips from a nearby village, I was upset. I suspected that he had dumped the wrapper somewhere on the way to Phadamchen. But when he pulled the wrapper from his bag, washed and neatly folded, I had tears in my eyes. This is the impact we were hoping for,” she says.

Six years into the initiative, the residents are elated. The clean-up has had other positive side-effects too. There’s been a reduction of threat from feral dogs that used to forage on the dumped food waste. “There are more birds around us. Tourists now come to our village for bird-watching,” says Sabita Devi, who owns a homestay near the Material Recovery Facility. More houses are now opting to become homestays because of the high tourist footfall. “The best part is that tourists are taking back our positive energy and spreading the message of cleanliness, which aligns with the ethos of the Swachh Bharat initiative,” adds Bhutia.

Bhutia’s team recently travelled to Mawlynnong in Meghalaya, reputed to be the cleanest village in Asia, for an exchange of knowledge. The women of Phadamchen are being supported by the government to make handicrafts like baskets and bags from the collected plastic waste. Phadamchen also has a learning centre for researchers and residents of nearby villages.

For the locals, the need to keep the Himalayas pristine is a matter of survival. “Keeping them clean of waste protects the rivers, forests, and other ecosystems that enable biodiversity to thrive. The Himalayas are our prized assets and heritage; it is our duty to protect them,” Bhutia says.