Integrated waste management approach is long overdue in Bangladesh

Bangladesh has a huge population approximately over 160 million and it is one of the most densely populated countries in the world. One can imagine the size of its enormous waste that could be generated, in particular, by the domestic, industrial and commercial activities in the larger cities. The urban area of Bangladesh generates approximately 16,015 tons of waste per day, which adds up to over 5.84 million tons annually. It is projected that this amount will grow up to 47,000 tons/day and close to 17.16 million tons per year by 2025, due to growth both in population and the increase in per capita waste generation (Country Analysis Paper Draft BANGLADESH, Bangladesh Third Meeting of the Regional 3R Forum in Asia Technology, Singapore, 5-7 October 2011). 

Waste is no longer regarded as waste these days. It is considered as extra sources of revenue if you can make use of unwanted materials. It may sound very strange, but it is true. Countries that have managed to establish efficient waste management and recycling systems are earning substantial amount of money by providing complete recycling and resource management services (by their public and private companies) to the local communities, effectively creating new jobs, better quality of environment and improved public health. Bank of America Merrill Lynch analysis predicts boom in global waste industry as resource crunch bites. The report says Global waste industry could double to $2tn by 2020 (Murrey, 09 April 2013 in Business Green Sustainable Thinking). Bangladesh should not miss out the opportunities to develop and expand its existing waste management systems. An integrated waste management approach is long overdue in the face of rapid creation of waste, which eventually will help Bangladesh stepping towards a sustainable future. 

Waste Concern; a social business enterprise founded in 1995 has been working with a vision to tackle waste issues in Bangladesh. Waste Concern Group was formed to achieve a common vision to contribute towards waste recycling, environmental improvement, renewable energy, poverty reduction through job creation, and sustainable development (http://www.wasteconcern.org/). It is a drop in the ocean but a huge step forward. There are also irregular small scale (informal) recycling centres are growing around the country. If they are managed and organised properly then it is possible to revitalise the local economy. On the other hand, a caveat, having hundreds of recycling centres wouldn’t help if the recycling centre employees do not practice what they preach. Meaning if they dump their unwanted materials as waste into the local drains, water courses or fly-tipping (illegal dumping) to open lands, then the purpose of doing recycling business would be useless. Therefore, waste legislations should dictate how waste should be managed and disposed. Also, appropriate environmental training and education are essential for those who run casual recycling centres. 

On 29th December 2011, Bangladesh Government had launched a National 3R (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle) waste management strategy, which was developed in collaboration with the support from The United Nations Centre for Regional Development (UNCRD),Government of Japan and Waste Concern would support waste reduction, reuse, recycle and appropriate disposal of waste. It is hardly surprising that a new set of National Waste Strategy was required to resolve waste related problems; however, at this point it feels like the strategy should have been adapted at some point earlier in time. Under the national 3R goal for waste management, complete elimination of waste disposal on open dumps, rivers, flood plains were to be achieved by 2015. As well as promoting recycling of waste through mandatory segregation of waste at source, create a market for recycled products and also to provide incentives for recycling of waste (National 3R Strategy for Waste Management, Government of Bangladesh, 2010). However, the dream could yet to become true, having different ranges of other priorities, the deadline year 2015 seemed too near considering the implementation costs, lack of institutional and infrastructure facilities, amount of waste and public cooperation in achieving above mentioned goals. 

Apart from the lack of financial, institutional and infrastructure facilities, the crux of the matter is to raise public awareness in order to change their behaviour and practices. Changing the mind-set, internal culture or behaviour is the hardest thing. A genuine commitment across the general public is required at all levels and in all sectors for meaningful change to occur. It is noteworthy to mention that my observation in early 1990s in Sweden was an excellent one. I came across many times extraordinary behaviour and practices among general public when it came to respect to the common good and understanding the potential risks from waste. Someone behind you would pick up the rubbish and put it in the nearest bin if you had thrown it on the street. It took Swedes over many generations to build up this kind of attitude, also some of the environmental problems e.g. effects of acid rain in 1980s raised green consciousness even stronger. In the context of Bangladesh, it is still a long way to go to enshrine such mentality as the irresponsible practices of handling and disposing waste on individual level has been going on for so long that people consider it part of their daily routines.

With the increasing amount of waste that is generated, Bangladesh has fallen behind in waste handling and disposing and will fall even further if the waste issues are not taken very seriously and the conclusion drawn is that it has to be at the forefront of environmental sustainably agenda.

Do you think you can get away with greenwashing? Think again!

In the past, understanding of green and non-green products and its impacts on the environment and human health were little-known. Over time, the environmental knowledge continues to grow among public and the society as a whole; hence it has become inevitable that the production of goods and services are expected to be eco-friendlier. However, in the midst, there are still many who continue to spend needlessly more money and time, falsely claiming that their products are eco-friendly. It is time to distinguish between green winners and greenwashing.

Since the environmental movement gained momentum in mid 60s, many companies rushed to create green images to stay on competitive advantage, without looking at the consequences what might happen if their false claims were to be found out, and how harder it would be to rebuild the good reputation again. Companies or business organisations can no longer play with people’s mind while promoting misleading environmental claims through so called ‘green marketing’. In the USA & EU, there have been some environmental regulations which were developed and even modified the existing legislations to counter these issues. For example, the US Federal Trade Commission updated its environmental marketing guidelines to intervene when businesses are falsely claiming that their products are green and European law requires that advertisers list their CO2 emissions in advertisements.

However, the question is - how the customers will know about the green products if the business organisations do not disclose the information? Customers should ask the questions and create pressure on the businesses to reveal the truth of the environmental claims. In this context, Corporate Reporting has been playing its priceless role separating between green heroes and greenwashing, however yet in many cases the consistency and accessibility to quality data have not been satisfactory, therefore it is important that the information in the reporting is accurate, verifiable, consistent and clear.

It is a fact that Corporate Reporting on economic, environmental and social issues has entered a new phase. It has moved from an experimental phase to a standard practice. In its recent survey of Corporate Responsibility Reporting 2017, KPMG found that the majority (78 percent) of the world’s top companies (G250) now do this, indicating that they believe CR data is relevant for their investors. The practice has shown remarkable growth in recent years: in KPMG’s 2011 survey only a minority 44 percent of G250 companies included CR data in their annual reports. Among the N100, the underlying trend is also one of growth, with the rate of companies including CR data in their annual reports up to 60 percent in 2017. There has been a particularly significant increase in the number of US N100 companies integrating CR information into their financial reporting – 81 of the top 100 US companies now do this compared with only 30 just two years ago in 2015.

Finally, those who are still thinking that they can get away with greenwashing, they should think again. Business organisations should grab the green opportunities as the sources of strength rather than barriers to their business growth. Greenwashing is not just worth anymore. Customers will find out and you as a business will lose the integrity and credibility.

Is plastic the main problem or what we choose to do with it?

Plastic pollution is not a recent phenomenon; it has been there for many years. Based on various types and sizes, plastics have been polluting the wildlife habitats, environment and human population since it was invented more than hundred years ago. Until recently, we have realised that the pollution crisis have reached to pandemic proportions. BBC series ‘Blue Planet II’ presented by the famous natural history presenter David Attenborough, who eloquently explained and showed some of the shocking images how plastic waste are polluting our oceans. It is estimated that eight million metric tons of plastics end up in our oceans each year. Furthermore another estimated 150 million metric tons currently circulating our oceans. According to research by The Ellen MacArthur Foundation, by 2050 the ocean will contain more plastic by weight than fish. Plastics are basically everywhere from shopping bags to packaging materials, rigid plastics, foams, nylons, cigarette filter tips, synthetic fibres in clothing and even in the cosmetics as micro-beads. A single shower could result in 100,000 plastic particles entering the ocean. We are living in a plastic world, and it is one at a scale that we simply cannot ignore. Plastics are even finding its way to human food chains and we still do not understand the full extent of the human health impacts.

Plastics are very popular around the world due to its physical properties and cost-effectiveness. It is light, can be easily shaped, strong and cheaper compared to its other contenders. That is why plastics have reached to every corner of the planet and the rapid growth of plastic users after the post-world war 2 scenarios have been staggering. The uses of plastics have grown exponentially in the last 70 years without realising its negative effects. Now, we are trying to turn the wheel around but how? The questions to be asked are – what can we do about the pandemic of plastic pollution? Is plastic the main problem or what we choose to do with it?

‘Beating plastic pollution’ has been the theme for 2018 UN Environment Day, which has raised a lot of public awareness around the world and many countries have taken substantial steps to beat the plastic pollution. Many European countries have introduced a levy on plastic bags. China is one of the biggest users of plastics has implemented a ban on thin plastics. India’s Prime Minister has recently pledged to eliminate all single-use plastics in the country by 2022, with an immediate ban in Delhi. Bangladesh Government banned plastic bags in 2002 for different reasons; however it is now helping to limit the pollution levels. Not only governments but also many private companies, NGOs, charities etc. are now refusing single-use of plastics. The Coca-Cola Company has promised to make bottles containing a higher percentage of recycled plastic packaging to be reused and recycled. Despite the progress being made, we are way behind tackling the problems. It is therefore the momentum to beat plastic pollution should continue to progress. A train certainly has started rolling from its breakdown but it needs to roll faster.

Our society has been enjoying the benefits of plastics over hundred years but at the same time we let the plastic pollution go for too long. We didn’t realise that the pollution levels would be skyrocketed in such an astonishing way. Even If we completely stop using the plastics from today, it will still take hundreds of years to be non-traceable in the ecosystems and the environment, or it may never be fully recovered. Instead of blaming the plastics, the main attention should be on how the plastics get into the oceans? Why are there so many gaps in consumers’ knowledge and behaviours? The answers to these questions are very straight forward, yet they are complex as they have got socio-economic and cultural factors associated.

Public knowledge and behaviour vary widely from country to country. It happens often in the developing countries, people throw all sorts of things on the street including plastic packaging e.g. shopping bags, bottles, and food packaging etc., thinking it is government’s job to clean up. Plastics are comparatively lighter than other packaging products, therefore there is a greater risk that it will be blown away by wind to the roadside drains, ditches, canals, rivers and finally find its way to the oceans. Even in the richer part of the world, we have witnessed time and again in our holidays that people leave behind their rubbish after spending time on the sea beach. It could be purely due to lack of knowledge or laziness – people do not want to walk up to 100 meters to dispose their rubbish in the appropriate recycling bins. They are not bothered if plastic straws or bottles end up in the ocean, they may have the knowledge but do not care about the impacts of plastics on marine life.

To reduce plastic pollution, the behavioural issues are particularly complicated. The changes of behaviour will not occur until people understand the adverse effects of plastic pollution. No matter how many regulations will be brought into by the Government but it will not work. Citizens cannot just wash their hands off, thinking they are exempted to participate. They should be doing their parts too. We cannot expect that the Government will get all the necessary done without the help from the citizens. What Government can do? They can provide more waste management and recycling facilities, more awareness campaign activities, making sure the recycling plastic is economically viable, promote educational activities in the schools and looking for further opportunities to close the gaps. In order to carry out these activities, huge investments are required, but where will the funds come from? Environmental priorities always go at the bottom of the list when there are other so called important issues to be tackled.

Plastics cannot be completely eliminated as it has got many benefits. Society must strive to create sustainable plastics supply chain that benefits both the environment and economy. One of the biggest challenges in our hands is that the use of plastics will increase across the globe but collection and recycling efforts will not grow simultaneously, therefore we will fail to keep up with the pace. It says where there is a problem, there is an opportunity. I believe there are real opportunities particularly for the developing countries to turn this plastic menace to a profitable business by improving the Health, Safety and Welfare at work, CSR & Sustainability practices within the waste management and recycling sectors.

Agricultural livelihoods of green revolution & agricultural biotechnology are no ‘magic bullet’ to end global hunger

Agricultural livelihood of green revolution of 1960s and 1970s hoped to alleviate global hunger crises by improving seed qualities, farm technology, better irrigation and chemical fertilisers, which subsequently enabling developing nations to be self-sufficient. Regardless of the success of greater food production, it is highly questionable whether the lower strata of rural poor achieved greater food security or greater economic prosperity.

Parallel narrative like ‘we need new technology to end hunger’ in recent years has prompted even bigger debate with genetically modified crops. Monsanto, Novartis, AgrEvo, Dupont, Mycogen, American Home Products and other companies who are reinventing themselves as biotechnology companies with the help of international agencies having a global agenda to promote genetically modified crops to alleviate global hunger. It has been thought by these multinational companies that the second green revolution will save the world from hunger and starvation with the help of magic seeds and plants produced by genetic engineering techniques.

Before we get carried away, let us look at the facts. Proponents of green revolution technology were understandably happy to take the credit that in between 1970 to 1990 the total food available per person rose by 11 percent and estimated number of hungry people fell from 942 million to 786 million, a 16 percent drop. However, these figures can give falls assumptions. Eliminating China from this analysis showed that hungry people actually increased by more than 11 percent, from 536 to 597 million (Rosset et al, 2000). In South America per capita food supplies rose almost 8 percent but the number of hungry people also went up to by 19 percent. Even in South Asia, there was 9 percent more food per person by 1990, but there were also 9 percent more hungry people.

The agricultural progress that made green revolution possible did not take any account on equal distribution (Wolf, 1986). New seeds, fertilisers and pesticides boosted the crop yields and benefited those farmers who had the access to irrigation system and markets for their crops. Subsistence farmers remained vulnerable to crop failure, droughts, natural catastrophe and diseases. Distribution of economic power especially access to land and purchasing power was narrowly focused. It is still debateable if the poor did benefit from the technology; many poor farmers gained nothing from new technology. Indeed, they often lost (Jewitt, 2002). Farmers with ownership holdings larger acres of land got better opportunities to invest on new seeds, fertilisers and pesticides. Poor paid more and got less, as poor farmers could not buy fertilisers and other inputs. Bigger growers aimed to buy large amounts and got discounts. The relationship between small farmers and moneylenders became less traditional and more commercial, and many farmers became indebted (Conway, 1997).

Even in the case of tube wells, larger farmers could afford the initial investment and have lower costs per unit. The capital-intensive agriculture strategy tends to increase disparities within small farmers. Use of heavy machinery allowed a drastic reduction in the input of human labor. Rural people’s livelihood were affected from the impacts of green revolution in different ways; whether they were wage earners, cultivators or consumers, whether they came from landed or landless, rich or poor, male or female headed households. Final results had been massive displacement and loss of lands to the bigger growers, increasing urbanization, poverty amongst small farmers.

Impacts of green revolution were felt not only on rural livelihoods, poverty, politics and urban-rural relations but also ecological impacts were immense. Fertilizer, pesticide and herbicide runoff became a major source of water pollution. Green revolution allowed growing very fewer varieties of crops which mean fewer verities of diet and nutrient values were least than their ancestors. The introduction of green revolution staples into regions that previously had hundreds of varieties of crops and replacement of various nutrition sources, with a single green revolution alternative have led to poor nutrition diets. With the green revolution, farming became fossil fuel dependent. So the energy that must be expended to produce crops had also increased at a greater rate. Critics had charged that the green revolution destroyed soil quality over the long period by increasing soil salinity, heavy use of chemical fertilizers, killing off beneficial soil microbes and other organisms, erosion of the soil and loss of valuable trace elements.

However, the biotechnology revolution differs from the green revolution in many aspects. Major aspects of agricultural biotechnology (so called The Second Green Revolution) are to develop food crops and livestock as well as enhancing the nutritional quality of foods (value-enhanced crops) and reducing the need for toxic pesticides and herbicides. Research continues on crop varieties, which are drought tolerance and will produce their own fertilisers. Unlike the green revolution (classical or conventional plant breeding practices) where food production were increased by improving seed qualities, development of high-yielding varieties of staple crops, farm technology, better irrigation and using chemical fertilisers. As Shiva, 1991 concluded that heavy use of fertiliser had led to degraded soil with falling crop yields and polluted water sources during the green revolution. The new technology so far relies on the same chemical approach. Therefore artificial fertilizers continue to be used and pests are likely to become resistant to genetically introduced toxins with the risk of creating "super bugs” – the soil ecology is likely to be damaged (Bundell, 2004). 

Like green revolution technology, agricultural biotechnology has increased very sharply from 1.7 million hectares in 1996 to 11.0 million ha in 1997 and more than 28 million hectors in 1998 (Buttel, 1999). But despite of the 15-fold increase in GMO crop area from 1996 to 1998, crop biotechnology is still fairly limited in scope (Buttel, 1999). Will the agricultural biotechnology revolution alleviate global hunger as it was said in the case of green revolution? The answer is not very simplistic or evidential because the technology is still advancing and yet to be implemented in many countries in the world, particularly in those countries where there is more hunger. Whatever rewards it brings for humanity but its benefits are accompanied by controversy and not without problems. Scientific uncertainty, conflicting government priorities, lack of coordination among legislative bodies and the absence of civil penalty system have undermined the level of environmental protection conferred by GMO regulation. There are so many questions yet to be answered for example, do we need the product? Do we want the product? How does the product affect us? 

Private sectors are dominant for developing, promoting and commercialising of the genetic engineered varieties, whereas public and non-profit sectors played the predominant role during the green revolution. The process of new biotechnology is not very cheap. GMO technology has motivated a number of mergers and takeovers between seed and chemical companies because biotechnology requires considerable investment; the companies have attempted to exercise exceptional control over the processes, genes, and chemicals (Tripp, 1999). For example, the top 10-agrochemical companies control 85 per cent of the global agrochemical market; the top five control virtually the entire market for GM seeds. Concentration of ownership within the industry is increasing. If the new technology remains in the hand of big corporations then it will continue to reliance on external inputs, concentrate on ownership of land and resources. This will further widen the gap between poor and rich. GM technology does not address this fundamental issue of inequality of access. For example, ‘terminator technology’ or ‘the suicide seed’ will prevent farmers from saving seed for their next planting and force them to buy new seeds each year or to buy the proprietary chemicals needed to make the seeds germinate (Bundell, 2004).

Three distinct techniques such as tissue cultures, molecular markers and transgenic crops are classified as biotechnology, differing in costs and perceived risks (Byerlee and Gregory, 1999). Transgenic crops are controversial because of concerns of science, potential impacts on environment and human health and concerns about the structure of the transgenic crop industries. Growing number of biotechnology companies are trying to push forward their agenda through the government policies, USA is a good example in this regard and having trade difficulties with European Union (EU). There are conflicting regulatory approaches between EU and US, which make the whole GMO issues very controversial. The biotechnology dispute had the characteristics of a high-tech industrial dispute and this dispute had the potential to damage other countries.

Genes with specific characteristics are directly transported in the plant cells, which can be called as transgenic plants. Two well known agricultural biotechnology's first generation of products are Bt corn and herbicide resistance soybeans. Even though the success in USA, questions are always arising the capacity of existing regulatory approaches and institutions to address issues related to safety in biotechnology. It is vitally important worldwide efforts to develop and apply appropriate strategies and safety assessment criteria for GMO research and to ensure the wholecomeness and safety of its supply (FAO and WHO, 1997).

Regulatory response is not straightforward; it is as complex as GMOs. There should be provision of science-based mechanisms by which choices of acceptance can be made (Serageldin and Collins, 1999). For example, what magnitude of risk is acceptable by the government in accepting the technology? What are the likely outcomes in high-risk situations? What additional risks such as, opportunity costs and direct costs do face an individual firm?What risk do consumers face in chossing the product and how do they recognise those individual risks? Regulation in Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) remains a controversial topic. In Europe particularly, the law says that you cannot patent discoveries, you can only patent inventions (Serageldin and Collins, 1999). Genes are discoveries, therefore they cannot be patented. This argument does not apply in America because the law is differently phrased. An invention is defined as an invention or discovery (Serageldin and Collins, 1999).

But why these safety assessments are important? Because the sources of DNA are virtually coming from animal, plant, microbial or synthetic. They can mutate in response to environmental influences and thus may disturb the ecological balance.  Therefore, “Genetically modified organisms must not be released into the environment as the consequences for the environment and the evolution are unpredictable and irreversible” (Anderson, 1999). These modern techniques solely differ from the green revolution technology.

In the green revolution technologies farmers required to have the knowledge about how to combine the seeds, chemical fertilisers and irrigations but in the case of agricultural biotechnology farmers are facing uncertainties about the impacts. Educated and rich farmers can build up their adaptive capacity quickly than poorer farmers against uncertainties (Feder et al, 1982). Foster and Rosenzweig (1986) find that the return to schooling in India rose when green revolution varieties were introduced and that educated farmers were more benefited than uneducated farmers. Farmer’s learning will probably concentrate on knowing the plant-insect varieties instead of how much insecticide needs to be used (de Janvry et al, 1999). The major issues will be what crops should be developed and how the poor farmers will have access to those crops.

  

Regulatory concerns in developing countries are growing more and more because pressures will be applied from both domestic and foreign sources; these will include the interest of plant breeders, agriculture input and commodity firms and a range of political and advocacy groups (Tripp, 1999). To take regulatory decisions about GMOs require high quality of technical information about environmental interactions. This information is costly to acquire and most developing countries do not have adequate resources for this purposes. External funding is required to support environmental studies, as well as for the broader concerns of biodiversity conservation (Tripp, 1999). Strict regulations in some of the industrialised countries on the release of GMOs or products might encourage some biotechnology industries to conduct their experiment in developing countries without government knowledge or approval, because of lack of regulation, technical information and public accountability (Serageldin and Collins, 1999). Therefore, regulatory authorities of those countries are increasingly facing the new challenges.

Promises of green revolution were to alleviate global hunger, increasing global carrying capacity with increased yields, increasing technological knowledge and reaching the materials to the rural farmers. Primary objective of green revolution was a successful one but it did not alleviate the global hunger. It is claimed that lessons have learned from green revolution experiences. It is believed that hunger is not caused by a shortage of food and cannot be eliminated by producing more foods. Introducing any new agricultural technology into a social system without addressing the social questions of access to and who gets the benefits from it is a fundamental question. Without a strategy of addressing these issues of powerlessness of the poor, the tragic result will be more food and yet more hunger. Dubious benefits to the poor and potential risks associated with the second green revolution unfortunately will not end the hunger.