Waste Concern

Bangladesh based Waste Concern improves waste through a composting scheme that provides organic fertilizer to poor farmers, while also reducing greenhouse gas emissions.  They operate as a hybrid non-profit. 

Waste Concern collects household waste, which is taken to community-run composting plants to be turned into organic fertilizer. The organization then arranges for fertilizer companies to purchase and nationally market the compost-based enriched bio-fertilizers. Each year, Waste Concern produces 7,500 of compost in Dhaka; 8,087 tons in other parts of Bangladesh. Fertilizer companies estimate that farmer demand has risen to 50,000 tons per year. The technology used for composting can treat 30,000-35,000 tons of waste per year and reduces emissions by 20,000 tons of carbon dioxide per year.

It has also attracted foreign direct investment through carbon trading using the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) of the Kyoto Protocol. This had led to an agreement with a Dutch company to develop two CDM-based projects: a 700-ton-per-day composting project and a gas extraction and utilization project at the Matuail landfill site in Dhaka. Waste Concern, along with its Dutch partner, is building a plant in Dhaka with a compost production capacity of 50,000 tons per year. This project will reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 89,000 tons per year.

Waste Concern is also assisting two cities in Sri Lanka and in Vietnam in replicating its model. And with support from the Lemelson Foundation’s Leap Frog Fund, it is exporting its waste management model to Saiban, a Pakistani NGO, for a slum settlement in Karachi. With support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the model is being replicated in 10 Asian and 10 African cities. A regional recycling training centre was opened in Dhaka in 2010 for the benefit of both local and international participants.