Is plastic a problem, or is it badly managed? 

What comes to your mind when you think about the most visible problem in every community across Bangladesh? It isn’t poverty, corruption, or even the floods. The problem that you see every day and everywhere is garbage.

Garbage is littering our streets, polluting our rivers, and even accumulating in front of our homes. Plastic constitutes a significant portion of our landfills and waste, with Bangladesh generating over 380 tons of plastic every day.

The interim government has been aggressive in implementing a nationwide ban on plastic use, led by Environment Adviser Rizwana Hasan, who has been an advocate for the movement for decades. However, we must ask ourselves this question if we are to solve the challenge of plastic pollution truly, Is the use of plastic truly the problem, or is our failure in managing plastic leading to the problem itself?

Suppose we are successful in truly banning the overall use of plastics, but what happens to the plastics that remain in the country?

Even as an environmentalist, I will be the devil’s advocate in this case. For a developing nation like Bangladesh, the use of plastics brings numerous benefits. Plastic is durable, cost- and energy-efficient, and also helps reduce food waste.

These are vital qualities for individuals struggling with poverty and economic hardship. With over 5,000 enterprises, the plastic industry employs more than 1.2 million people in the country as well.

Realistically, a ban on single-use plastic may result in a greater negative economic impact and increased cost of living, leading to job losses and exacerbating the struggle of low-middle-income families to afford alternative products to plastic.

Ultimately, a ban on plastic will take Bangladesh backwards, both economically and socially, while plastic pollution persists across the country. 

Even with all these benefits, why is the use of plastics considered such a massive problem in our society? It is undoubtedly because of how poorly we manage plastics in general.

Our failure to implement systems that can effectively manage plastic waste, combined with our lack of education on how to dispose of plastic waste properly, has resulted in littering our roads, overloading our landfills, and polluting our canals and rivers.

Our poor management of plastic waste is now contributing to the harm to our environment, the same environment that provides us with air, water, and food for our survival.

Instead of diving deep into the problem to find a solution, we overlooked the problem in our plastic waste management and put the entire blame on our use of plastic. 

Most papers, research and initiatives focus on promoting the problems of plastic pollution, but how many propose realistic and practical solutions to the problem itself?

There are fewer than 300 plastic recycling plants in Bangladesh, the majority of which are small-scale, informal businesses, insufficient to address the daily amount of plastic waste generated in the country.

A few companies, such as Bangladesh Petrochemical Company Limited (BPCL) and Garbageman, are working on creating practical solutions to plastic waste. Still, we need more innovation to come to light if we are to manage our plastic pollution better. 

When it comes to traditional solutions for recycling plastic waste, many NGOs and small-scale initiatives think about creating artefacts or handicrafts. But let’s be honest, artefacts and handicrafts won’t run our economy, nor will they address the mammoth waste challenge in hand. With the durability and cost-effective features of plastic as a material, we are seriously overlooking the value plastic waste can bring in as a raw material if used effectively.

Bangladeshi startup Plastile is creating plastic tiles from recycled single-use plastics, including polyethene bags and shampoo bottles, which can be used for pavements, walkways, and even parking areas. If such a solution were to receive proper resources, support, and marketing, perhaps we would have an incredible solution to dealing with plastic waste in our hands. However, our dedication to banning single-use plastics has silenced the news of solutions in the corner, which are struggling to make their mark in the market, challenging the expensive and non-durable counterparts of their products.

Imagine if we could convert our plastic waste into raw materials that can be used to build roads in rural areas, roofs for village homes, and small-scale bridges, rather than cutting down bamboo. Imagine if we could recycle plastic to build embankments, thereby preventing the impacts of cyclones and floods on our coastline. Ironically, the proper use of plastic waste could enhance our resilience to climate change, given that we are one of the most climate-vulnerable nations globally. 

The bitter truth is that banning single-use plastic will not solve our plastic pollution challenge. In reality, it will exacerbate unemployment, increase the cost of living, and even lead to political unrest across the country. If we are to address our challenge of plastic pollution truly, we must shift our narrative from banning the use of plastic to utilising the waste generated from it. To address the challenge of plastic waste effectively, we, as a society, must start exploring ways to harness our plastic waste as a valuable resource. Our government must implement policies that enhance the public and private sectors in converting plastic waste into resources and economic goods. Our schools must teach our children how to manage our habits in dealing with waste. Our media must highlight initiatives which dare to take an unorthodox approach to converting our plastic waste into items we can truly use, inspiring and motivating others to do the same. The solution to ending plastic waste can be achieved not through banning single-use plastic but rather by harnessing what we do with it when we are ready to dispose of it. 

Gold is a metallic ore. A hundred-taka note is a piece of paper. Yet, you don’t see people throw away gold or money because society has put a high value on them. The moment we place value on our plastic waste and stop seeing it as waste will be the moment when not a single piece of plastic will be found lying on our streets, canals, or rivers, making Bangladesh an example for the rest of the world on how to deal with plastic pollution.

Shah Rafayat Chowdhury is the Co-Founder and President of Footsteps Bangladesh, an NGO which has helped 700,000 people graduate from extreme poverty to date. He is also a Climate Change Consultant at the Asian Development Bank and received his degree in Environmental Economics and Policy from Pennsylvania State University. Shah.rafayat@footstepsbd.org