Author: Senta Berner

Training and sanitation facilities for staff and informal workers are now available at the Rajbandh disposal site! On 07.10.2024, our training facility, which includes office space, a control room, resting areas and sanitation facilities, was inaugurated (photos by Amirul Islam, 2024).

The facility is located right at the entrance of the disposal site and is accessible through the main access road.

The facility comprises three rooms and wash facilities, thus upgrading the operational setup at the Rajbandh site. The main goal of the facility is to improve working conditions for informal waste workers and staff by providing a covered resting area and appropriate sanitation. Additionally, the centre provides room for training activities and office space to manage site operations.

The first training activity conducted at the facility was an occupational health and safety training session and first aid training. It took place on 28.10.2024, and was organised by the SCIP Plastics Working Groups III and Awareness Centre team.

Photos by KUET, 2024.

Is waste separation at secondary transfer stations (STS) feasible? This is the question, we try to answer with our waste separation scheme at Newsprint STS in Khalispur, Khulna.

On 27.10.2024, the refurbished Newsprint STS was inaugurated. The new equipment comprises throwing sieves, wheelbarrows and sorting tools for low-cost, manual waste sorting. Four informal waste workers were employed for the operation. The workers received occupational health and safety training and instructions on the sorting process. In this test phase, we will sort biodegradable material, non-biodegradable and hazardous waste as specified in the 2021 Solid Waste Management Rules of Bangladesh. For now, the test phase will run for seven days and we will observe the technical sorting efficiency as well as operational aspects, like the occurrence of bad smells or pests. Then, we will compile results, evaluate the process and make improvements if necessary.

Photos by Sourav Saha and KUET, 2024.

Waste separation is critical for material recovery. Every time waste is mixed, moved and transferred, materials start to deteriorate. Paper is a good example. It degrades very quickly if it gets wet and cannot be recovered after a while. In the case of plastic, contamination might lead to some degradation and can cause inefficiencies in the recycling process because additional cleaning or washing procedures must be implemented. Optimally, we would separate materials at the source. In the case of household waste, this would be at the household level. However, this is not always easy to implement since it requires a strong buy-in from residents and waste collectors. With our waste separation operation at the STS, we are investigating if material recovery with our manual sorting process is a feasible alternative to source separation at the household level.

First truck monitoring campaigns have been conducted at the temporary truck weighing station at Rajbandh final disposal site.

In environmental management, we often talk about BAD – Best Available Data, knowing that available data is often of poor quality and unreliable. Our temporary truck weighing station at the entrance of the Rajbandh final disposal site is making BAD better!

For the first time, we can accurately determine waste quantities that are collected by KCC trucks and disposed of at the Rajbandh site. In July and October 2024, two measuring campaigns took place, monitoring the weight of trucks and generating over 400 data points. Currently, we are evaluating the results and blending the data with existing information from previous investigations in the project.

Photos by Saptarshi Mondal and Sourav Saha, 2024.

The KCC Awareness Center is ready to open its doors to the public! Over the last year, the Awareness Center Team has been building expertise in public engagement and compiling research results from the SCIP Plastics project to present at the centre. Now, we are happy to announce the Awareness Center Open Days. First, every second month, and later every month, we will open our doors and invite a specific stakeholder group to join us in the centre and discuss waste management, plastic pollution prevention, and solutions for a cleaner and healthier Khulna. On 30.04.2024 and 07.07.2024, we successfully carried out our first two test runs with stakeholders at KCC and schools and colleges.

Opening the Awareness Center to the public is critical in fulfilling our mission to create a central contact point in Khulna, fostering connections among waste management practitioners and experts beyond the SCIP Plastics project. Through raising awareness and facilitating mutual learning, we aim to empower stakeholders and spread the research outcomes of SCIP, contributing to effective waste management practices in Khulna and the region.

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.

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.

“You cannot manage what you do not measure!” is the motto of the hour. To put any waste management infrastructure planning on solid footing, we need reliable data. Up to now, waste quantities have been approximated by maximum truck payload. This might have led to an overestimation of waste generation in Khulna. We will soon find out! The SCIP Plastic project is currently constructing a platform at the entrance of the Rajbandh final disposal site. Here, we will carry out a truck monitoring with a mobile truck scale. Construction is well under way and we are optimistic to conduct our first weighing campaign in June 2024.

Over the last year, WG III investigated various processes and activities at the Rajbandh open dump site, the only active final waste disposal site for Khulna city. Now, the team will start monitoring and quantifying plastic emissions in the form of wind-blown litter and washed-out material. On 13.11.2023, the WG III team, Pangkaj Kumar, Salahuddin Setu, Tasnova Imam, Saptarshi Mondal and Senta Berner visited the disposal site and outlined a first monitoring protocol, as well as necessary improvements along the fence line and embankments to ensure quantifiable sample collection. The team also tested a drone which will be part of the monitoring, especially to gauge the impact of extreme weather events on waste body movement and plastic emissions.

On the 9th of November 2023, the civil engineering faculty of KUET inaugurated their new research hub building. The building will host the SCIP Plastics Knowledge Transfer Hub, including all working group members and the Waste Lab. Prof. Eckhard Kraft and Gregor Biastoch joined the celebration as special guests and speakers in the inauguration panel.
The hub building and its facilities are fully dedicated to the research field of solid and plastic waste management showing KUET’s commitment to address this issue in the coming years.

The 3rd Board of Directors meeting was hosted by the CUET SCIP-team and took place in Cox’s Bazar on the 4th of November. The project leaders, Prof. Eckhard Kraft (BUW), Prof. Farzana Zuthi (CUET), Prof. Rafizul Islam (KUET) and Mr. Abir Ul Jabbar (KCC), as well as scientific experts reviewed and discussed the project progress presented by the working group leads and heads of the waste lab and awareness center. As an extraordinary member of the scientific expert panel, Prof. Jörg Londong (BUW) gave valuable insights to further improve project outputs.