Content Page Number

Intoduction 2

Current scenario in Bangladesh 3

Laws & Policies for E-waste Management 7

Formal and Informal Sector 8

Opportunities Of Sustainabile Development 10

SWOT Analysis 11

Conclusion 13

References: 14

1|Page
Introduction:
Throughout human history, the residuals of daily activities have been disposed of in
the easiest and least expensive manner possible, thus ingraining a perception of “no
value” toward the stuff we call waste. Worldwide population is approaching 7 billion
people and growing at about 80 million people per year. The superhighways of
commerce in the industrialized countries are now filled with the consumer goods of
a global economy. However, solid waste management in many of the developing
countries today is at a point where the industrialized countries were a hundred years
ago.
In recent years, as a result of fast growing access to technology and the rapid growth
of the economy, a market has emerged for computers, electrics and home appliances.
Electronic waste defined as secondary computers, electronics device, mobile phones,
and other entertainment items such as television, refrigerators, whether sold or
discarded by their original owners. According to the global trend in Bangladesh also
the market for electronic goods in having exponential growth due to rising
disposable income and increasing demand for the latest electronics products. A large
proportion of waste generation in our country comprise E-waste. In Bangladesh
generally e waste includes cell phone, television, telephone, washing machine, air
conditioners, electronic toys, etc. But in addition to this waste electronic products
such as printer, compass, light, radio, horn, etc. generated from ship breakage
industry also constitutes a significant quantity of E-waste in Bangladesh. According
to BEMMA Bangladesh consumes around 3.2 million of electronics products each
year. Of this amount only 20 to 30 percent is recycled and the rest of the waste is
released in to landfills, rivers, drains lakes, canals, open spaces which are very
hazardous for the health and environment. Chemical such as lead, mercury, copper
found in computer scene and TVs and berylliums in motherboards are poisonous. It

2|Page
can lead to fatal disease like cancer kidney failure and damage the environment
through soil water pollution. Most of this electronic products are recycle by the
informal sector that’s mainly located in Dhaka and Chittagong city.

Current scenario in Bangladesh:

In every year Bangladesh generated roughly 2.8 million metric tons of e-waste. But
without knowing the harmful effect of the e-waste these has dumped in to the open
landfills, farming land and in the open sources of water bodies. From NBR data, it
is evident that in the last 3 years, 63,003,818 mobile phones have entered
Bangladesh. The lifespan of a mobile phone currently stands at a maximum of 2.5
years or even less in some cases. This indicates that these used mobile phones and
also unaccounted informal imports will be in the waste stream of Bangladesh within
the next two to three years. According to a study more than 500 thousand computers
were in use in 2004 and this number has been growing 11 percent annually (Hossain
2007). If the figure of 500 thousands were taken as the base line that many pc would
contains approximately 30646 tons of waste in 2013 containing deadly plastics lead
mercury etc. Bangladesh is a signatory to the Basel convention on trans-boundary
movements of hazardous waste. Currently there has no specific regulation & rules
dealing with e-waste management. The ministry of environment and forest (Moef)
is in process of formulating the rules on e-waste management. As the reported low
level of knowledge on hazardous item found in e waste they showed a very positive
attitude towards development of hazard free e-waste management system. The
aggregate value of the willingness to pay (WTP) for the e-waste management was
BDT 1.13 billion. Furthermore, as our nation is hoping to become digitalized in the
near future, the usage of electronic equipment will rise at a faster pace.

3|Page
Brief impacts:
• Health impact: Cancer, Asthma, Nerves breakdown, Hearing problem, Visual
problem,
Infant-mortality, disable baby birth.
• Environmental impact: Air pollution, Water pollution, Land pollution and life
threat for wildlife.
• In Bangladesh every year more than 15% child worker died during and after effect
of e-waste recycling and more than 83% are exposed by toxics substances and
become sick and live with long term illness. According to ESDOs recent study and
available information, approximately (50,000) fifty thousand children’s are involved
in the informal e-waste collection and recycling process, amongst them about 40%
are involved in ship breaking yards.
• E-waste generated from ship breaking yards alone about 2.5 million metric tons of
toxics e-waste in a year.
• Bangladesh has generated 10,504 metric tons of toxics e-waste by cell phone sets
within last 21 years.
• Every year around 296302 TV sets become scrape and generated 0.17 million
metric tons of e-waste.
E- waste concentration areas:
With the rapid update of technological product, large amount of electronics goods
are becoming obsolete and are disposed of in a short period of time. In Dhaka very
commonly it is known as the “vangari shops” which are involved in the business of
these wastes. The largest vangari spot in Dhaka are:
 Nimtoli
 Dholaikhal
 Elephant Road

4|Page
Most of the shops in different recycling markets of Dhaka opened during the last 3-
4years and they are handling mainly PC and related materials. The exponential
growth and use of PC and their rapid obsolence has led to the growth of these recycle
shops.
There are also different areas in Chittagong that handles second hand electronics
products, following are the key areas dealing with e-waste recycling among them.
Those places are:
 CDA market
 Coxy market
 Ice factory road
 Vatiary
 Kadamtali
The main sources of e-waste in Chittagong is the ship breakage industry. Almost
95% of the e-waste generated in Chittagong is from this particular sector. Thus it
can be commented that, without this particular ship breakage industry, Chittagong
would have been less burdened with toxic e-waste problem.
A survey on the recycle shop workers revealed that, on an average they earn BDT
3000 monthly working 12 hours a day! Compared to other professions, the workers
engaged in e-waste recycling are getting lower wages. A day labourer in the city
earns minimum BDT 200 for working 8hours a day. Hence recycling as a profession
is less financially rewarding in spite of being hazardous.

5|Page
RECYCLING OF OLD COMPUTERS & ELECTRONIC ACCESSORIES IN
DHAKA CITY BY INFORMAL SECTOR

6|Page
Laws & Policies for E-waste Management:
 Bangladesh adopted its National Environment Policy in the year of 1992
highlighting the regulating all activities that pollute and destroy the
environment.
 No specific law or ordinance for e-waste management and recycling. But we
have
 Bangladesh Environment Conservation Act, 1995, The Environmental
Court Act, 2000, and The Environmental Conservation Rules, 1997.
 The Environment conservation act, 1995 authorize the Director General
to undertake any activity necessary to conserve and enhance the quality
of environment and to control, prevent and mitigate pollution.
 Medical Waste Management Rules, 2008 addresses the waste
management issues for the medical sector including E-waste.
 Government already prepared draft National 3R (Reduce Reuse and Recycle)
Strategy and in that draft e-waste issues were addressed.
 Hazardous Waste Management Rules is under preparation and still time to
incorporate E-waste management issues for proper management of E-waste
among others.
 The Department of Environment prepared draft solid waste management rules
which is now in consultation stage and still time to include E-waste
management issues in that rule.
 Import of any kind of waste requires Government permission.
 The High Court of Bangladesh has directed the Department of Environment
to ensure that all ship- breaking yards operating without environmental
clearance shut down their operations. The court gave ruling in March’90.

7|Page
  The High Court also directed the government to ensure that no ship with
hazardous wastes enter the country without being pre-cleaned at source or
outside the territory of Bangladesh.
 The court observed that none of ministries had co-operated to ensure
conformity to the environmental laws. The order said the government had to
ensure that ships were only broken after guaranteeing safe working conditions
for the laborers and having in place appropriate disposal arrangement for
hazardous wastes and protection of environment.

Formal and Informal Sector:

In Europe and North America, workers generally perform recycling within plants
designed for this specific purpose, with proper ventilation and protection of the
workers. This is often described as formal recycling. In Bangladesh, “Azizu Trading
Co.” is the only one licensed & authorized electronic waste recycler started
operations since 2008. It is engaged in handling, recycling and reusing of Waste
Electrical and Electronic Equipment(WEEE) in friendly way. The initiative is to aim
at reducing the accumulation of used and discarded electronic and electrical
equipment’s, which most end up in landfills or partly recycled in a unhygienic
conditions by backyard recyclers and then partly thrown into waste streams
damaging the environment. The objective of Azizu is to create an opportunity to
transfer waste into socially and industrially beneficial raw materials like valuable
metals, plastics and glass using simple, cost efficient, home grown, environmental
friendly technologies suitable to Bangladesh Conditions.
Currently in Bangladesh, recycling of disposed electronic products is mainly being
handled by the informal sector. Electronic waste or E-waste is collected, segregated,
dismantled and recycled in the informal sector based in Dhaka's urban slums. The
first stage of the value chain includes the generators of electrical waste, which are
8|Page
the households and offices. The next players of the trade value chain are the informal
scrap collectors or vangariwala, who buys e-waste directly from the generators. Here
the vangariwala either sells it to the second hand market, repairs and sells it again to
consumers or secondhand shops, or sells them to the bulk collectors and manual
dismantlers. Once they are dismantled, the different components are sent to different
places around Dhaka for further processing, recycling and smelting activities. The
final step of the value chain is recycling, where precious and special metals are
extracted from the component. The manual dismantling and recycling stages include
processes like open burning and acid treatment. E-waste contains around 1000
different chemicals, many of which contain high levels of toxins and hazardous
elements. If e-waste is not recycled and disposed of in an environmentally prudent
manner, it can pose serious threats to both human health and the environment.
The informal sector plays a vital role in the collection process of e-waste, their link
with the “vangariwalla” or collector is critical in the trade value chain.
The informal recycling processors have helped in keeping e-waste within tolerable
limits and will be an integral part as formal entrepreneurs enters waste recycling
business. Training and educating the informal recyclers on the impact of discarding
& safe handling of harmful elements is very important occupational health and safety
concern. Extended Producer Responsibility is a policy approach under which the
producers, importers, or brand owners of electronic equipment pay a certain amount
of fee to ensure proper disposal and recycling of the electronic product after it
reaches its end of life. Thus here the producer of the electronic equipment is fully
responsible for its proper end of life management; whereas on the other hand ARF
is an amount paid by the consumer at the cash register when buying any electronic
products. This fee is for the electronic product to be recycled properly when the
product reached it end of life and turns into electronic waste. Hence, consumers of

9|Page
electronic products pay it forward so that in this way all electronics is recycled in an
appropriate manner.

Opportunities Of Sustainabile Development:

 Data Management: The development of a more sustainable e-waste
management system is contingent on the quality of data available for decision-
making purposes. Consequently, development of a more complete, accurate
and useful data collection and management system is paramount to
establishing a more sustainable e-waste management system. The information
could be combined with other pertinent databases associated with product
information and demographic information to create a comprehensive database
that would be extremely valuable for users interested both in the quality of the
products they produce, availability of reusable components, and methods for
remanufacturing, reusing and recycling them.
 Materials: E-waste is well known for containing a wide range of materials that
are hazardous to both the environment and the people who work with e-waste.
Consequently, a need exists to develop products using “greener” raw materials
and processes and to recover valuable materials from e-waste that can be used
in other products.
 Design: Development of methods for making products that are more easily
disassembled, repaired, remanufactured and reused are essential to a more
sustainable system.
 Delivery Mechanisms: Most users of electronics do not need to own them –
they only need performance. Development of alternative mechanisms for
delivering performance (e.g. leases, service contracts, etc.) could dramatically
reduce waste.

10 | P a g e
  Education Opportunity: Specific design and engineering courses could be
developed to advance the science of e-waste management.
 Technical Assistance: Technical support regarding methods for e-waste
collection, storage, feedstock management and data management would be
extremely important to ensure widespread diffusion of sustainable e-waste
management. Additionally, seminars and training on best practices associated
with e-waste management would promote behavior change. Help associated
with implementation of pilot e-waste management programs would be another
key component.

SWOT Analysis:
A SWOT analysis is a structured planning method used to evaluate the strengths,
weaknesses, opportunities and threats involved in a project or in a business venture.
A SWOT analysis on E-Waste management involves identifying the internal and
external factors that are supportive and unsupportive for sustainable e-waste policy
developement where the key feature of SWOT are:
 Strengths: characteristics of the policy that give it an advantage over others.
 Weaknesses: characteristics that place the policy at a disadvantage relative to
others.
 Opportunities: elements that the policy could exploit to its advantage.
 Threats: elements in the environment that could cause trouble for the policy.

Strengths:
In the National ICT Policy, 2009, environment, climate and disaster management is
identified as one of the ten objectives and aims to ensure safe disposal of toxic waste.
Government has already prepared draft National 3R (Reduce, Reuse and Recycle)

11 | P a g e
Strategy where e-waste issues are addressed. It is encouraging that recently the High
Court of Bangladesh has prohibited scrap ships from entering the country without
ensuring public health safety.
Weaknesses:
In Bangladesh, there are no strict rules and people are not much aware about the
negative consequences and dangers of the improper disposal methods. Our country
while featured by exponential increase in e-waste; the lack of regulations regarding
its safe disposal; the absence of a management infrastructure; and the lack of
institutional capacity and general awareness to tackle the problem.
Opportunities:
Rising of awareness on the e-waste management issues by consumers and companies
can be the biggest opportunities to change the processes used to monitor and control
the disposition of e-waste. Awareness campaign is essential through both traditional
(newspapers, TV) and new media (web, blogs, social networks). The campaign
should address policy makers as well as the general public. For consumer it is
important that one should maintain and keep equipment as long as possible. People
should donate their unwanted electronics for reuse. Government can support and
encourage manufacturers to incorporate waste recycling plants as part of their
production. Consumers need to know more about what to do with electronic waste.
Very importantly, Bangladesh needs to enact strong laws and build infrastructure to
ensure safe disposal of e-waste.
Threats:
The threats for e-waste policy developement are the insufficient capital investments
in processing e-waste, insufficient resources and technologies as well as lack of
political will to enforce government to go for formal e-waste management.

Conclusion:
12 | P a g e
A digitized Bangladesh is unquestionably a huge opportunity for our nation. But we
should be prepared for the consequences that will accompany this modernization
leap. To ensure hazard free recycling of e waste Comprehensive and sustainable laws
are needed. Which will be based on polluter pay principle government should enact
rules for e waste management and handling. In our country waste are not separated
before disposal. Initiatives should be taken to separates garbage in to burnable, non-
burnable and e-waste. This will help to segregate waste easily and isolate e waste
which will in turn increase recovery by reducing wastage.
This is an important to establish to an e-waste treat plant. Government can support
and encourage manufacturers to incorporate waste recycling plants as part of their
production. Consumers need to know more about what to do with electronic waste.
Very importantly, Bangladesh needs to enact laws and build infrastructure to ensure
safe disposal of e-waste. While the problem of e-waste were widely discussed and it
is to help policymakers with appropriate policy instrument.

References:

13 | P a g e
  Hossain, “Country presentation: Bangladesh First Regional Conference on follow up the
1st phase and preparation for the 2nd phase of the WISS”, 11-13 October 2004, Bangkok.
 M. Pervez, M. Hossain and A. Bari, Nonfunctional Cell phone –a hazardous waste”, The
new nation, November 5, 2007
 S. Sinha, K. Wankhade and D. khetriwal, Mumbai choking on e-waste: a study on the e-
waste in Mumbai”, Toxic link, 2007
 S. U. Ahmed, “E-waste a growing concern for the ICT-based growth and development –
a first cut analysis,” Research paper series 60007, Development Research Network,
Dhaka, 2010.
 Dr Rowshan Momtaz, Professor of Civil Engineering, BUET, in “E-Waste Practices in
Bangladesh” on EHS Business Solutions
 http://azizu.com/e-waste-in-bangladesh/
 Study on E-waste: Bangladesh Situation 2010
 Kutub Uddin Chisty, Student, Department of Urban & Regional planning, Chittagong
University of Engineering & Technology (CUET).
 E-waste Management Scenario in Bangladesh/www.doe-bd.org
 E-waste/ The Basel Action Network (BAN),
 ESDO: Bangladesh EIA baseline survey 2005

14 | P a g e