Recycling of Solid Waste in Khulna City

Abstract

Solid waste recycling approach is a part of sustainable and effective waste management system for most cities of the world. In the course of achieving proper solid waste management, many efforts in developing countries especially in Bangladesh have been focused on waste collection and disposal. Although institutionally the waste recycling part of waste management has been ignored, many individual dealers and house-to-house waste collectors have undertaken the recycling part of waste management as a source of income from long ago in Bangladesh. The purpose of this study is to investigate and analyze the potential of traditional recycling of solid waste in Khulna, the third largest city in Bangladesh. The study revealed that the private sector is playing an important role in Khulna in recycling of solid waste. This private sector comprises a chain constituted by house-to-house waste collector (Feriwala), waste bin collector (Tokai), recyclable dealers (small, medium and large recyclable dealers) and industries at the top. It is estimated that at present 1312 tokais are working in Khulna city who collect waste from dustbins and disposal sites. On the other hand feriwalas are playing a very important role in the recycling process. They are the buyers of separated recyclable items stored for selling at the primary source (household). This study shows that there is more than 695 feriwalas involved in the chain of recycling network of Khulna. This estimate has been based on the information provided to by the recyclable dealers, feriwalas and brokers. They purchase materials include bottles, broken glasses, tin cans, containers, newspaper, magazines, aluminium utensils, iron items (construction rod, sanitary fittings etc.) in exchange of money, or sweets. The tokais and feriwalas then approach small recyclable dealers (SRD) who accept all types of waste and pay them accordingly. The study shows that there are 277 SRDs in Khulna city. The SRD then approaches medium recyclable dealer (MRD) to sell particular kinds of waste. From the field investigation it is found that there are 140 MRDs in Khulna. The MRD usually deals in more than two kinds of specific wastes and passes these recyclable wastes to the large recyclable dealers (LRD) who essentially specialize in specific wastes. There are about 33 LRDs in Khulna. The recyclable wastes are finally then passed on to the recycling industries (RI). The study revealed that there are 31 recycling industries in khulna. The study revealed that 7.2 % (37.23 tons/day) of the total generated waste or 53.2 % of the recyclable waste or 84.6 % of readily recyclable solid waste is recycled daily and more than 4500 people are working in the private sector activity relating to waste recycling in Khulna. Private sector deals mainly with the non-biodegradable wastes and some slowly biodegradable wastes. Recyclable waste collected by private sector includes paper, glass, plastic, aluminum, iron, tin, bones and tyre. Except bone, paper plastic and lyre all other retrieved materials are transported to industries located in Dhaka, Jessore, Kushtia, and Barisal as raw materials for new products. Three approaches were subsequently proposed to evaluate the possibility of formalizing the unorganized waste trade. It was concluded that it is possible to organize the sector without loss of employment. This proposal seems economically sustainable, as recovered costs of the recycled waste would far exceed expenses.