The Buriganga no longer smells like a river.
On the banks beneath Babu Bazar Bridge, the air hangs heavy with diesel fumes, smoke and the sharp chemical scent of melting plastic.
Hundreds of launches and country boats crowd the waterway, but another economy thrives along the shore -- one built not on transport, but on waste.
Bent over small open fires, men feed discarded plastic bags and bottles into the flames.
Nearby, sheets of used polythene lie spread across the ground, baking under the sun before beginning another journey through Dhaka’s vast informal recycling network.
Among the workers is Ansarullah, one of an estimated 500 to 700 people earning a living from this riverbank industry.
Their labour helps keep plastic waste off the city’s streets and supplies a growing market for low-cost plastic products.
Yet the process comes at a devastating cost-to their health, to the environment and to the river that once sustained the city.
The supply chain is remarkably efficient.
Plastic waste collected from homes, markets and streets is transported to small factories along the river.
There, labourers sort, burn and break down the material into fragments before sending it back to factories for melting and remanufacturing.
The finished products eventually find their way into wholesale markets such as Chawk Bazar, from where they are distributed across the country.
A discarded plastic bottle can travel from household to street, from riverbank to factory, and back to the marketplace as a new product.
It is a cycle of recycling, but also a cycle of pollution.
The people powering this system pay the highest price.
“We know the smoke is harmful. We cough, our eyes burn,” says Ansarullah, glancing at hands darkened by soot and ash.
Many workers come from coastal districts such as Barisal, where salinity, river erosion and increasingly unpredictable weather have made farming difficult.
For them, Dhaka offers income, but often at the cost of long-term health.
Public health experts have repeatedly warned that open burning of plastic waste is among the most dangerous forms of pollution.
When everyday plastics are burned, they release toxic substances including dioxins, furans, styrene and carbon monoxide.
Exposure has been linked to respiratory disease, cancer, birth defects and other serious illnesses.
Along the Buriganga, these dangers are not abstract scientific findings.
They are part of daily life.
The persistence of this industry also raises an uncomfortable question: why have safer alternatives failed to replace plastic?
Bangladesh is home to one of the world’s most promising innovations in sustainable packaging, the jute-based biodegradable bag.
Developed as an environmentally friendly alternative to polythene, it was once celebrated as a potential game changer.
Yet years later, plastic continues to dominate daily life.
For most consumers, the choice remains simple: cheap plastic or no bag at all.
The jute alternative exists, but it has never been scaled, subsidized or marketed strongly enough to compete with the convenience and affordability of plastic.
Looking down from Babu Bazar Bridge, the contradiction is impossible to ignore.
The river remains alive with commerce even as it struggles under pollution. Workers continue earning a living even as the work slowly harms them.
Breaking this cycle will require more than awareness campaigns or environmental slogans.
It demands affordable alternatives, stronger regulation and economic opportunities that do not force people to choose between their health and their next meal.
The Buriganga once helped build Dhaka.
Today, it reflects the consequences of the choices the city continues to make.
The question is how much longer we can afford to look away.
