Municipal waste
Photo: Munir Uz Zaman / Driknews
I have gone through the UNB report on the subject published in the pages of a local English daily on January 9th. An expert from IUBAT talked a lot about recycling of municipal waste; however never mentioning a word about "Waste Concern", a private organisation, which had pioneered and is still recycling municipal garbage, since about a decade back in Dhaka city. This pioneer venture was the brain-child of Engr. Imamuddin and his enterprising colleagues. In Bangladesh, we have many "experts", who talk a lot about ideas about which, we the layman may not know; yet these experts are unaware of what is happening around them! So much for experts and their observations. However, rational garbage management should be taken up by Dhaka City Corporation. They should begin with segregation of household waste and refuse to begin with, from there they can go on to producing fertiliser, and selling off recyclable waste like tin-cans, plastic materials, glass wares and other metallic and non-metallic refuse. This will need creating awareness, followed by training and reorganisation of the DCC refuse collection and management set-up, at all levels, starting from the top! They may even ambitiously explore the possibility of power generation from municipal refuse with setting up a joint venture private-public effort in this direction. This could be a pragmatic and rational way ahead for DCC, to mange its growing refuse handling and disposal. However, since this idea is coming from a "student' of alternative energy, and not an "Expert", by any yardstick, I wonder if the relevant authorities will even take this matter seriously at all!
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