Project Summary
Khulna is the third-largest city in Bangladesh with a population of more than 1.5 million. In these days, the amount of urban waste is growing rapidly due to the rapid population increase by urbanization and is one of the key issues on how to conduct waste management effectively or efficiently in the City. In these circumstances, “Waste Pickers” mainly collecting and separating valuable wastes such as bin, can, plastic bottle, battery, newspaper, etc from the primary, secondary and final waste dumping sites, play very important roles in the contribution to resource circulation in the society. Despite Waste Pickers are one of the main actor in the waste management, they are seriously faced with the following issues. Social exclusion from the society; Health problems due to poor working conditions; Not sufficient sanitation education and safety equipment such as mask, gloves, long boots; Not conduct environmental education as a community level; Not sufficient collaboration and communication among Khulna City Corporation, community people, NGO, waste picker in the waste collection; Not sufficient livelihood of waste pickers. In order to improve the above situations, from October 2015 for three years, JEEF and BEDS implemented the project aiming at trying to develop a model case of the waste management in the community society of Khulna City, alleviating the prejudice of waste pickers and aiming to realize their social inclusion.
Under the initiative we completed the following activities;
- Formed a Waste Management Committee by involving multi stakeholders
- Formed a Waste Pickers Workers Cooperative Society by involving 40 waste pickers families
- Conducted Sanitation & Health Trainings Targeting at selected 40 Waste Pickers families using our developed educational materials
- Conducted waste pickers literacy program
- Conducted waste management education program as well as clean-up activities among the selected 40 elementary & secondary schools involving Waste Pickers and using our developed education materials
- Conducted a pilot livelihood improvement project on formal distribution channel of valuable waste by the Waste Pickers cooperative Society
- Hold a policy meeting
- Hold a Local Waste Management Forum in Khulna
