Editorial
A multi-dividend project
We felicitate the maiden enterprise
IT'S quite a cheery piece of news when uncertainty prevails about what impact the global financial meltdown might have on our economy. Organic waste generated at the city's Karwan Bazar kitchen market has been successfully recycled into producing quality bio-fertilizer. Our felicitations to the local firm Waste Concern and their Dutch partners which have flagged off the world's first-ever UN-approved Clean Development Mechanism(CDM) compost plant in Narayanganj.
This unlocks a whole range of possibilities that lie in bio-wastes of which we have a super-abundance ranging from our backyard wastes through kitchen-market generated heaps to the variegated dumping grounds in the city. From bio-fertilizer to bio-gas to perhaps electricity -- the possibilities are endless.
Of the many dividends derivable from the technology, some are too obvious to be mentioned such as speedy garbage clearance and efficacious recycling while others relate to cutting greenhouse gas emissions under the lofty Kyoto protocol. Indeed, the chief benefit of the technology is that it is carbon-free, so that this is entitled to receiving a certificate for non-generation of carbon. The developed countries financially support such processes in the poor countries out of a sense of obligation to cut carbon emissions where they themselves have failed to meet the targets.
The products turned out by such environment-friendly technology have a USD 25billion global market.
So, a bonanza is before Bangladesh now to chart out a course for replication of the project all over the country, either indigenously or through collaboration with foreign partners who would only be too keen on such a highly profitable undertaking. For the present, two more plants are planned to be set up at Gazipur and Savar next year raising the total capacity of handling waste up to 700 tonnes per day out of 3,500 to 4,000 tonnes of total waste generated in the capital daily. The other metropolitan cities, let alone the municipalities, are throwing up a huge amount of waste just waiting to be recycled.
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