- Target:
- Dhaka City Corporation
- Region:
- Bangladesh
- Website:
- www.globalgiving.org
Dhaka is one of the most polluted cities in the world! The government must take necessary actions immediately to minimize pollution and develop a greener environment! Please support us in this endeavor!
1. 10% of garments factories with international contracts do not have waste treatment plants - which means they should lose their contracts as all international clothing chains require these.
2. More than 50% of factories which actually have waste treatment plants only use them during inspections, as they are very expensive to run.
3. International chains have policies whereby they announce inspections to the factories beforehand - these factories take full advantage of these policies to make sure they get away with fake standards.
4. Local workers for international chains take bribes to help make inspections easier.
DISTURBING FACTS
* 8,000 grabbers identified so far
* 1,000 acre land grabbed
* 60 percent pollution caused by industries
* 82 percent human excreta from city directly discharged in rivers
* Rivers almost biologically dead
We call on you to ensure that the waste management system in Dhaka, one of the most populated in polluted cities in the world, is improved for the benefit of its many citizens.
We recommend you do this by improving the budget for waste management, introducing alternative methods of management such as recycling so that the pressure on city dumps is reduced, or a combination of both.
Dhaka has the worst garbage collection rate in the country, with 58% of waste remaining uncollected, with the range being 30-40% for the other cities. A large portion of this waste is degradable (or easily recyclable) waste – foods and vegetables account for 59.91%, paper products account for 11.21%, garden waste accounts for 8.76%, and rocks and dirt account for 2.3%. Foods, vegetables, garden waste and dirt can be cheaply accounted for by being composted instead of putting them into dumps.
This can be done in large composting sites or by converting bio-degradable waste to bio-gas. Paper products can be recycled using a combination of cheap, small-scale initiatives and slightly larger scale plants. This means that 82.18% of Dhaka’s pollution can be handled using green, cost-effective methods!
We do recognise that these are long-term initiatives that would require years of planning to implement successfully. However, the benefits outweigh the monetary and time costs. Furthermore, you could balance this by starting publicity and awareness campaigns to educate people about managing their own waste. 49.08% of Dhaka’s pollution is from residential areas. If you start to educate the residents of these areas, it would effectively reduce the amount of garbage you have to handle directly. Furthermore, it would be beneficial to start segregating waste into recyclable and non-recyclable waste. A further level of segregation with regards to what can be composted (e.g. food and garden waste) would be even better.
We, the citizens of the city that you have been tasked to keep safe and clean, are asking you to ensure that we can truly trust the authorities to let us live long and healthy lives.
You can further help this campaign by sponsoring it
The We Demand a Better Waste Management System in Dhaka! petition to Dhaka City Corporation was written by Green Channel and is in the category Environment at GoPetition.