Forbes has spotlighted Punjab’s Suthra Punjab initiative as one of the world’s largest and most advanced digitised waste management systems, crediting the province for transforming a long-ignored waste crisis into a scalable climate and development success story.
Launched and rolled out across the province in just eight months, Suthra Punjab now provides a unified, digital waste service to nearly 130 million people, handling around 50,000 tons of rubbish every day.
The system integrates cities and remote villages under a single provincial authority built around the Lahore Waste Management Company (LWMC).
According to Forbes, the initiative stands out for skipping small pilot projects and moving directly to province-wide implementation. LWMC CEO Babar Sahib Din said the programme combines political support, strict monitoring, and digitised operations.
Trucks, bins, and routes are tracked in real time, while contractor payments are linked directly to performance data, reducing manipulation and “ghost” payments.
The financing model blends public funding, user fees, and revenue from waste-to-energy projects and carbon credits.
Punjab has already begun developing large-scale waste-to-energy plants, including a 25MW facility in Lahore that will feed power into the national grid.
