{"id":20024959,"date":"2018-06-19T13:58:01","date_gmt":"2018-06-19T08:28:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thethirdpole.net\/?p=24959"},"modified":"2021-01-07T22:28:17","modified_gmt":"2021-01-07T16:58:17","slug":"the-monsoon-focusses-bangladeshi-battle-against-polythene-bags","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dialogue.earth\/en\/pollution\/the-monsoon-focusses-bangladeshi-battle-against-polythene-bags\/","title":{"rendered":"The monsoon focusses Bangladeshi battle against polythene bags"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Historically, two things always come together in Bangladesh \u2013 the&nbsp;annual national budget session in parliament and the monsoon.<\/p>\n<p>The monsoon is welcomed by every farmer in Bangladesh,&nbsp;which is&nbsp;a predominantly&nbsp;agricultural based economy heavily dependent on the annual rains. But for the cities, especially for Dhaka and Chittagong, the May-July&nbsp;monsoon is nothing short of&nbsp;a nightmare because of all the&nbsp;water-logging, which is intimately linked with the irresponsible&nbsp;disposal of popular non-biodegradable polythene bags that end up&nbsp;clogging the sewers.<\/p>\n<p>Dhaka\u2019s sewers&nbsp;will never induce memories of a&nbsp;Batman movie where entire armies can be accommodated&nbsp;under the city.&nbsp;Here, the sewers&nbsp;comprise of a very primitive network of concrete pipes most of which are less than 1 metre&nbsp;wide.<\/p>\n<p>Furthermore these pipes serve a city with a population density of 44,500 people per square kilometre, making it the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.weforum.org\/agenda\/2017\/05\/these-are-the-world-s-most-crowded-cities\/\">most densely populated city in the world<\/a>. The second most densely populated one is Mumbai, in India, with 31,700 people per square kilometre.<\/p>\n<p>There are many areas in Dhaka \u2013 &nbsp;Dania, Paltan and&nbsp;Demra&nbsp;to name a few \u2013 that go under several feet of water after just a couple of minutes of heavy rain. The sewers in these areas are so clogged up by polythene that even this amount of water overwhelms them.<\/p>\n<p><figure id=\"attachment_24961\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-24961\" style=\"width: 1020px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-24961\" src=\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/IMG_3976.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1020\" height=\"765\"><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-24961\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Trash piles up in the drains during the dry months [Masum Molla]<\/figcaption><\/figure>This year,&nbsp;an item in the&nbsp;budget&nbsp;will try to tackle this issue and hopefully reduce the chaos caused by the monsoon for&nbsp;city dwellers. The budget session in parliament is less than three weeks away and&nbsp;there are high chances that the government is going to impose a 5%&nbsp;supplementary duty on the production of&nbsp;all kinds of polythene plastic&nbsp;bags.<\/p>\n<p>Abul&nbsp;Maal&nbsp;Abdul&nbsp;Muhith, the&nbsp;only finance minister in Bangladesh&nbsp;who has presented&nbsp;10 national budgets,&nbsp;recently said, \u201cIn addition to promoting&nbsp;environment-friendly domestics&nbsp;products, the move of proposing&nbsp;a&nbsp;supplementary duty on polythene and&nbsp;plastic bags will help check environmental pollution and reduce&nbsp;water-logging problems in Dhaka city.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Every year, the&nbsp;government spends a fortune on preventing water-logging in&nbsp;the cities with very little success.&nbsp;Winter in Bangladesh is usually very dry, which means people forget about water-logging and the authorities face no pressure to act. But, as the rains start becoming heavier, the authorities suddenly realise that the allocation to improve the metropolitan\u2019s sewers have remained unspent. Hasty plans are made to deal with this, and are \u2013 &nbsp;by the very nature of rushed implementation \u2013 &nbsp;imperfect and wasteful.<\/p>\n<p>Despite desperate planning and&nbsp;policymaking for many years,&nbsp;it has&nbsp;also utterly failed to find any&nbsp;sustainable solution to the urban water-logging problem during&nbsp;monsoon.&nbsp;For example, in 2018, the Dhaka Water Supply and Sewerage Authority (WASA) is going to spend BDT 1.93 billion (USD 23 million) to tackle the city\u2019s water-logging problem.&nbsp;From 2013-16, the government spent a staggering BDT 3.03 billion (USD 36 million) to free the city of water-logging.<\/p>\n<p>Like every year the&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/dwasa.org.bd\/\">Dhaka Water Supply and Sewerage Authority (WASA)<\/a>&nbsp;is&nbsp;implementing&nbsp;an emergency excavation of 25km of canals, which&nbsp;remain clogged with plastic bags&nbsp;and cause water logging during&nbsp;monsoon. The program also includes removing garbage from&nbsp;290&nbsp;km&nbsp;of drains.<\/p>\n<p>The&nbsp;extra duty&nbsp;will try and limit the need to deal with this, by encouraging people to use biodegradable plastic bags by reducing&nbsp;the price gap&nbsp;between biodegradable and non-biodegradable packaging materials. At present, the average&nbsp;price of a regular plastic bag is BDT 1&nbsp;(USD 0.01) while&nbsp;a&nbsp;biodegradable plastic bag&nbsp;costs&nbsp;around BDT 5 (0.06).<\/p>\n<p>The government wants to reduce the price gap. This doesn\u2019t mean the government wants to make the price equal. If it really wanted to do that overnight, it would have imposed a 25% duty, which would destroy the non-bio plastic industry and render the several hundred thousand workers in this industry jobless. Instead it wants to encourage a transition. There is also the issue of waste segregation although Bangladesh does a decent, if not commendable, job of recycling. According to a <a href=\"http:\/\/wasteconcern.org\/prospects-of-plastics-waste-recycling-in-bangladesh\/\">study by Waste Concern<\/a>, urban areas in Bangladesh generate 633,129 tonnes of plastic waste annually. Out of this, 51% (323,000 tonnes) is recycled.<\/p>\n<p>In Bangladesh, the plastic industry produces basic products for&nbsp;readymade garments, construction materials, packaging and household goods. The government doesn\u2019t have any solid&nbsp;data on the&nbsp;demand for regular polythene. However, the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.doe.gov.bd\/\">Department of Environment (DoE)<\/a> estimates that the&nbsp;annual per capita plastic consumption in Bangladesh is around 8 kilogrammes.<\/p>\n<p>Mohammed&nbsp;Ziaul&nbsp;Haque, director of the&nbsp;DoE, said&nbsp;the government is actively considering&nbsp;legislation to make the&nbsp;use of biodegradable packaging&nbsp;mandatory&nbsp;for all manufacturers.<\/p>\n<p>Bangladesh has a proud record&nbsp;of&nbsp;legislating against hazardous use of&nbsp;plastics,&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/uk-24090603\">becoming the first country in the world to ban the use&nbsp;of plastic bags<\/a>&nbsp;in January 2002.&nbsp;Unfortunately because the biodegradable packaging materials such as jute remain costly, there has been virtually no slump in the popularity of non-biodegradable polythene.<\/p>\n<p>However, one policy decision made in&nbsp;2010,&nbsp;when&nbsp;the government introduced the&nbsp;Mandatory Jute Packaging Act&nbsp;stipulating&nbsp;the use of jute bags&nbsp;for&nbsp;paddy,&nbsp;rice, wheat, maize, sugar and fertilizer, helped in significantly reducing the use of plastic packaging in the agriculture sector.<\/p>\n<p>At present, around five million&nbsp;biodegradable plastic bags are&nbsp;produced&nbsp;in Bangladesh&nbsp;annually,&nbsp;an insignificant amount against&nbsp;the ever-growing&nbsp;demand. The government now wants to ensure a solid supply of&nbsp;biodegradable plastic bags before declaring their usage mandatory.<\/p>\n<p>Currently only one local company,&nbsp;Expo Accessories Ltd, produces&nbsp;biodegradable polythene bags for garment exports; but the production&nbsp;is entirely dependent on imported raw materials&nbsp;\u2013 jute cellulose, synthetic polymer as binder, and cross-linker for chemical reaction&nbsp;\u2013&nbsp;making the end&nbsp;product expensive.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.bjmc.gov.bd\/\">Bangladesh Jute Mills Corporation (BJMC)<\/a>&nbsp;has recently&nbsp;introduced technology to produce a biodegradable polythene&nbsp;alternative called \u201cSonali&nbsp;Bag\u201d by mixing polymer and jute. This may be the path to the future<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCurrently we are producing 3,000 bags&nbsp;every day. Eventually, we want&nbsp;to increase production to 15,000 bags per day,\u201d said Mubaraok&nbsp;Ahmed&nbsp;Khan, inventor of&nbsp;the Sonali&nbsp;Bag technology.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As the monsoon approaches Dhaka, the most densely populated city on earth, prepares to battle with the polythene bags blocking its sewage systems<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2194,"featured_media":20024960,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[760],"tags":[578,20000341],"hashtags":[],"country":[20000116],"class_list":["post-20024959","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pollution","tag-plastics","tag-water-pollution","country-bangladesh"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v26.0 (Yoast SEO v26.0) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ 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