Creating public awareness for waste management

The huge amount of Dhaka city wastes could be utilised for producing electricity

Now there are lots of wastes usually found around the cities and can be classified as domestic, municipal and industrial which cause immediate harm to human beings, other organisms and exert pressure on our environment polluting soil, air and water. Hazardous wastes pose danger to living organisms, soil structure and environment though seepage, corrosion, toxicity and other detrimental effects. The term 'hazardous' referes to a substance that has been discarded, abandoned, rejected but may interact with other substances to their detriment. The large volume of wastes those are generated daily in all of the major cities (Dhaka, Rajshahi, Khulna, Chittagong etc) is a serious threat to the residents and environment. Improvement in quality of both life and environment with proper management of large volume of waste is a great challenge for the city authorities.

According to a non-governmental organisation dealing with waste management, around 3,500 tonnes of solid wastes is produced in Dhaka each day and the number of cleaners' not sufficient enough to keep the city clean. Suggestions are made by various experts but nothing fruitful has yet been obtained in this regard.

The ordinance promulgated by DCC in 1983 provides for punishment -- jail, and penalty of Tk. 50 to 10,000 -- for littering streets with wastes but in absence of strict enforcement of laws and ordinances promulgated from time to time, the environment is only degraded further with the increase in the volume of wastes generated from various sources. Lack of awareness, illiteracy and poverty of the common people have great impact on the aspect of pollution of environment with wastes.

Added to this are various inadequacies of municipal authorities. The cities suffer. All the heterogeneous substances are mixed with the municipal solid wastes which create a problem for composting. Suggestions can be made for adopting the system of collecting MSW as followed in Germany and other European countries. It indicates collection of glasses, plastics, paper, metals and batteries in different containers and more specifically it means the containers should be made of different colours and wastes of different types should be thrown and deposited in the marked containers. The common people should be fully made aware about the use of the containers. The people may be attracted by showing demonstrations of the household waste disposal in municipal containers. This also requires imposition of laws and ordinances to be followed very strictly for the management of wastes.

Recycling of organic wastes is usually done for producing bio-gas which is the source of bio-energy in our country. Energy may be classified into commercial and non-commercial and the generation of methane gas CH4 indicates non-commercial form which can be easily available from decomposition of waste materials from animal sources and mixing with water hyacinth and other organic materials. Waste concern has been working since 1995 in Dhaka for collection and treatment of wastes in plant. The plant will produce methane gas which will be utilised to generate power. But it is a matter of surprise that nothing has so far been achieved for utilising organic wastes to solve the crisis of energy. Immediate approval should be given by the government to run this Netherlands government funded project. It was reported in the press a few months ago that the huge amount of wastes of Dhaka city could be utilised for producing electricity and a Japanese company visited Bangladesh to start a project but surprisingly enough it is also kept in file and no response has been made so far.

It is reported that Asian and European foreign ministers expressed their concern over high oil prices and called for development of alternative energy sources, including nuclear power. In a joint statement issued at an Asian-European meeting (ASEM) they expressed concern over the impacts of continued high oil prices on global economic growth. They called for enhancing energy security through energy conservation, improvement of energy efficiency and wider use of alternative energy sources. This is really very concerning for the poor people of Bangladesh where the government has already announced higher price of oil from next July and therefore it is imperative to find out alternative source of energy at a cheaper rate. At the present moment the best way is to produce methane gas by recycling cowdung and other waste materials in bio-gas plants in remote villages to meet the burning problem of energy.

The slurry or effluent produced after the generation of methane gas from cowdung is a very good organic fertilizer which increases the fertility of soil and enhances crop productivity to a larger extent since it contains high amount of nitrogen phosphate and potassium than is obtained from direct application of cowdung into the soil. This idea will also serve to do away with wastes found in large amount in cities and other places of our country, beneficially.

This is a duty of all of us and a prime need now to motivate the common people either in cities or villages regarding the harmful effects of wastes and their proper disposal. All of us and the government should come forward to take this challenge and arise awareness in the minds of the people.

Dr Md Shahjahan Ali is Professor, Department of Agricultural Chemistry, Bangladesh Agricultural University.