Month: May 2024

We were excited to facilitate a visit of our KCC key stakeholders, Mr Abir Ul Jabbar (Head of the Planning Department) and Ms Nurunnahar Anni (Conservancy Officer), to the German project partners in Weimar and Frankfurt and the IFAT trade fair in Munich.

Capacity building without a common understanding is challenging: waste transfer stations look different in Germany from the ones in Bangladesh. When colleagues in Bangladesh envision a waste sorting facility, their ideas might differ from what the German team understands. Thus, the visit of our KCC partners was an excellent opportunity to visit solid waste infrastructure in Germany and discuss differences, similarities and possible applications in Bangladesh. Highlights included the excursion to the composting plant in Umpferstedt close to Weimar and the residual waste treatment plant in Halle-Lochau.

The trip through Germany from 10.05. to 16.05.2024 ended with a visit to the IFAT trade fair in Munich. Together, we explored the latest inventions and applications in solid waste collection, sorting, composting and recycling.

The SCIP Plastics project had the honor of welcoming special guest Pro-Vice Chancellor Dr. Ulrike Kuch of Bauhaus-Universität Weimar to the Board of Directors meeting on April 27th at KUET. Dr. Kuch, Pro Vice-Chancellor of Social Transformation, accepted the invitation for a two weeks visit to Bangladesh. Her stay included visits to Chattogram, Khulna, and Dhaka, where she participated in various meetings and events.

In Chattogram, Dr. Kuch participated in a Knowledge Sharing Campaign with Chief Guest Prof. Dr. Mohammad Rafiqul Alam, Vice Chancellor of CUET, and engaged in discussions with the private recycling industry and the Chattogram Port Authority. In Khulna, she met with KUET officials focusing on the universities’ intentions of joint cooperation and exchange. In addition, she visited the Knowledge Transfer Hub and Waste Lab facilities on campus.

Her visit highlighted the challenges of plastic waste management and the efforts municipalities are taking to overcome the rising plastic waste production. With extensive insights, Dr. Kuch finally attended a strategic discussion on social transformation at the UGC to strengthen collaboration between the two countries in the field of education.

Aerial images are a great tool to survey any physical infrastructure. In the SCIP Plastics project, we have been using drones to survey and assess the Rajbandh final disposal site. In case of this open disposal site, drone images are critical, since not all sections of the site are safe to access. The images can help to determine the expanse of the waste body over time, to spot any waste leaks (solid and liquid) into the surrounding area, and oversee construction measures happening at the site.

Here are two drone images from March 2023 (left, © Florian Wehking) and April 2024 (right, © Noor Alam). We can clearly see how much closer the waste body moved towards the boundaries, especially in the north. Furthermore, a new larger leachate pond has emerged in the south-eastern corner just outside the boundary of the site. This is a concerning development and illustrates the need to improve containment measures at the site. The project team of Working Group III (lead: Pangkaj Kumar Mahanta) is currently working on improving embankments and the fence line.

After seeing how useful these drone images can be, we now started to use them in the urban environment to survey the state of secondary transfer points and stations in Khulna city. To create a baseline, on the 30th March 2024 we started with the open transfer stations. Here are the images of Boyra Azizer STS (left, © Noor Alam) and KDA Mosque STS (right, © Noor Alam).

Currently, we are developing operational guidelines and containment measures to reduce the spreading of plastic waste from transfer points and stations. Drone monitoring will be used to evaluate the impact of these measures.

Overall, the recent surveys illustrated that drones can be a great tool for city cooperations and public institutions to monitor and assess solid waste management infrastructure. The SCIP Plastics project has already developed basic standard operating procedures for the monitoring and will test these over the next months.