IDEM’s Clean Community Program is helping communities achieve goals to make Indiana a cleaner, healthier place to live. The Clean Community Program is about ensuring a better quality of life for all Hoosiers, now and for generations to come.
The Clean Community Program is a free and voluntary program aimed at recognizing and rewarding Indiana communities for proactively implementing projects that address environmental and health issues.
The Clean Community Program is designed to be flexible - municipalities choose projects that fit their community goals. IDEM recognizes the many environmental challenges municipalities face on a day-to-day basis under limited budgets, and through this program, assists municipalities with these challenges and publicly recognizes the successes achieved. The Clean Community Program can potentially help communities cut operating costs, while improving the quality of life for residents.
After nearly 20 years, IDEM is piloting new aspects of the Clean Community Program. During 2019, IDEM met with community leaders and interested parties to review the Clean Community Challenge (now called the Clean Community Program) to identify opportunities to improve the program. As a result of these meetings, the Clean Community Program Pilot is now accepting a broader range of projects, including those with a focus on sustainability rather than only focusing on municipal systems. In addition, the new changes encourage cooperation and partnership with residents and businesses to identify and implement projects important to the community. Finally, IDEM has streamlined the Clean Community Program to remove many of the time-consuming paperwork requirements. An example of the new streamlined approach is a 3-tiered membership, allowing communities to step through the program at their own pace rather than requiring it to fulfill all requirements right off the bat. In addition, IDEM has added a system which takes community population into account when determining the number of projects that must be implemented for membership. Each of these changes allow communities to focus on implementing projects and entering the program sooner. The Clean Community Program Info Sheet [PDF] provides additional information.
The Clean Community Program is expected to open state-wide in 2023.
Clean Pilot Communities:
- Beech Grove
- Fishers
- Merrillville
- Nashville/Brown County
- Richmond
- Zionsville
Questions or Interest in Joining? Please contact the Clean program manager.