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towards having a waste-free urban city.

by shamim ahmed mridha | 19-10-2021 04:36



Rapid urbanisation has resulted in an unregulated rise of cities and their people in Bangladesh during the last few decades. And it brought with it the attendant evil, rubbish. Dhaka, as the nation's capital, bears the lion's share of the population burden as well as the waste load. As a result, Dhaka alone generates a fourth of the total 25, 000 tonnes of waste generated by the country's urban centers each day. The current arrangement system under the various city corporations, municipalities, and certain neighborhood level waste collection operations can only dispose of a percentage of the cities' household garbage, particularly solid waste. The remainder is thrown in the open, in the drainage system, and in canals, lakes, and other bodies of water. These dumped waste products collect, clog, and poison the water all around over time. Those left out in the open decay and pollute the air and environment. Even more concerning are the toxic solid waste materials generated by hospitals and clinics, as well as non-biodegradable polythene bags and plastic items. Add to that the waste and effluent generated and discharged by numerous industrial units, institutes, and commercial entities.

To keep cities and their environments clean, pollution-free, and livable, a solution must be devised and implemented. What must be overlooked is the fact that the volume of urban waste will continue to grow over time. According to projections, cities would generate 47,000 tonnes of rubbish per day by 2025, which equates to 0.60 kilogram per person each day. There is no other way to manage such massive amounts of waste than to take a scientific approach to the problem. To that purpose, alternatives such as trash recycling and reuse, fertilizer generation, waste conversion to electricity, and so on should be seriously considered. The major goal of such efforts would be to find a way to manage garbage that is clean, efficient, and sustainable. The government's intention to build an environmentally sustainable waste-to-energy power station at the city's Amin Bazar dump is a model step in this regard. More efforts of this type, including some under the public-private partnership umbrella, would go a long way toward building a clean, waste-free city.