Each year, at least 8 million tons of plastic materials leak into the ocean -- equivalent to dumping one truckload of garbage into the sea every minute. If no effective action is taken, this will likely double by 2030 and rise to four trucks by 2050.
Bangladesh is home to an estimated 3,000 small-, medium- and large-size plastic goods manufacturing units, processing over 150,000 tons of plastic raw materials annually. Unfortunately, as in many other parts of the world, in Bangladesh too, most of these plastic goods are not recycled. Worse, some of these goods ultimately end up in different water bodies, rivers and oceans.
Now Bangladesh has a partner in Unido (United Nations Industrial Development Organization) in its pursuit of preventing marine litter, if not eliminating it totally, ensuring a sustainable use of plastics.
Norway is supporting the Bangladesh-Unido partnership of an integrated approach to sustainable plastic use and marine litter prevention.
Dr René VAN BERKEL, the Unido Representative who heads the UN body’s Regional Office, was on a visit to Bangladesh last week. He took some time to share some of the ongoing works and his thoughts about those with Dhaka Tribune. The Unido Regional Office in India is directly responsible for India, Bhutan, Maldives, Nepal and Sri Lanka, and coordinates country offices in Afghanistan and Bangladesh.
Asked what had brought him to Dhaka, Dr René VAN BERKEL said Unido is working closely with Bangladesh’s Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) and Department of Environment (DoE) in a project that aims at supporting policy and partnerships on plastics and marine litter, and improving awareness and action by consumers, manufacturers, health care, local government and recycling industry on responsible plastics use, plastics waste minimization and improved recycling and management of plastics waste.
“I spoke at and co-facilitated the stakeholders’ consultation and planning workshop for this project, hosted by DoE on September 13,” he said. Unido is also helping Bangladesh eliminate highly carcinogenic chemical compounds – polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) from all electricity transformers.
“Up until 1985, PCBs used to be used in transformers in the power distribution and welding sector. The PCBs are now subject to the Basel Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs); and having ratified this Convention, Bangladesh needs to eliminate PCBs from all transformers in use by 2025 and ensure their environmentally sound disposal by 2028,” he said.
Dr René VAN BERKEL, who also served as a unit head at the Unido headquarters in Vienna from 2008 to 2015 providing vital leadership in projects concerning green industry and cleaner production, said: “The Unido project is inventorying all transformers in Bangladesh, identifying those containing PCBs for timely PCB removal, and subsequent environmentally sound destruction.”
He also emphasized Bangladesh’s switching to the circular economy, especially in the supply chain of the RMG (readymade garment) sector. He said as part of a global project funded by the European Union, Bangladesh would get support to identify, implement and invest in circular economy solutions, particularly focused on returning fabric and other waste into new RMGs.
“The project will also work on industry awareness, policy environment and financing for circular economy in global RMG and related value chains,” said Dr René VAN BERKEL, who has also been a professor at Curtin University of Technology, Perth, Australia, and the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
He cast some light on promoting food safety and managing antimicrobial residues under a World Bank-funded livestock and dairy development program with the Department of Livestock and Fisheries. “The Unido component focuses on establishing and promoting best practices to ensure food safety for dairy and livestock products.”
The specific objective of the technical assistance is to provide support in tasks like gap analysis of existing legislation on food safety enforcement; drafting legal amendments and regulations for more vigorous food safety enforcement in relevant value chains; baseline data on the current level of food safety in suitable value chains; establishment of an animal-origin food inspection program; and support to the establishment of quality assurance schemes, including GAP, HACCP, ISO, CODEX, etc.