Waste Management:
Finding the Treasure in Trash

Urban waste disposal is an enormous problem – waste often piles up faster than cities can remove it. A pair of social entrepreneurs in Bangladesh are tackling the problem by creating a decentralized network of community-based composting plants.

Urban planners A.H.Md. Maqsood Sinha and Iftekhar Enayetullah belong to the school of thought that "considers waste as an economic resource from which marketable products can be delivered." They have developed composting plants, as well as barrel-type composting for slums and squatter settlements, that are financially viable, reduce the amount of waste, cut costs, and save on landfill area. Besides generating revenue and employment, they provide a source of environmentally friendly bio-fertilizer for the agricultural sector that can reduce the extensive use of harmful chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Finally, but perhaps most important, communities are cleaner and healthier as a result.

. . . continued

Watch a video about Waste Concern:

Moving from scavenging dangerous refuse heaps . . .

. . . to recycling trash into treasures





Photos by Shehzad Noorani /
  Developing Images
and Alasdair Macdonald

Initiatives for Source Separation and Urban Organic Waste Reuse
http://www.gdrc.org/uem/ waste/initiatives.html
Examples of small-scale, volunteer programs around the world that attempt to link waste reduction to: public-private partnerships, enterprise development, income generation, improved status of waste workers, consumer awareness and child education.