Bangladesh’s microenterprise sector generates substantial quantities of organic, agricultural, livestock, textile, plastic, and industrial waste. Much of it remains underutilised, openly discarded, or burned. It creates serious environmental pollution while representing a significant loss of economic opportunities. The scale of the problem is considerable. The livestock sector alone is estimated to generate approximately 209 million tonnes of manure annually from cattle, buffalo, goats, sheep, poultry and ducks, of which around 106.5 million tonnes could potentially be available for productive utilisation after considering practical constraints.
Agriculture adds further to this volume: Bangladesh produced approximately 52.25 million tonnes of rice during the 2021–22 season, generating an estimated 47.03 million tonnes of rice straw as a by-product, much of which is still openly burned or discarded, contributing to greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution. Manufacturing and processing enterprises add still more to the waste stream, generating production offcuts, defective materials, packaging waste, plastic scraps, textile remnants, paper waste, sawdust, and metal scraps that too often end up in landfills rather than being put to productive use. Left unaddressed, this waste degrades soil and water, worsens climate vulnerability, and represents idle value that microenterprises could otherwise capture.
Turning this waste into wealth requires a shift in perspective, from treating waste as a disposal problem to viewing it as a recoverable resource. This is where the principles of the Circular Economy and Resource Efficient and Cleaner Production (RECP) become central. Under these principles, enterprises reduce waste generation at source, segregate materials, optimise consumption, and adopt appropriate technologies that enable recovery and recycling, cutting the consumption of raw materials, water, and energy while minimising emissions. Innovative circular business models add a further dimension. Industrial symbiosis, where the waste or by-products of one enterprise become valuable inputs for another, improves resource efficiency across value chains, reduces disposal costs, and opens new market opportunities, while digital technologies and environmental performance monitoring allow enterprises to measure waste generation, track resource consumption, and continuously optimise their processes. Applied consistently, this approach delivers economic, environmental, and social benefits together: lower production costs and new revenue from recovered products for enterprises; reduced greenhouse gas emissions, methane release, water contamination, and soil degradation for the environment; and green jobs in waste collection, recycling, compost production, biogas operation, and value-added manufacturing for rural communities.
The Sustainable Microenterprise and Resilient Transformation (SMART) project of Palli Karma-Sahayak Foundation (PKSF) offers a working example of these principles in practice. Through its ‘Waste to Wealth’ approach, the project works with microenterprises across agribusiness, manufacturing, and service sectors, transforming waste, by-products, and underutilised resources into valuable raw materials, renewable energy, and marketable products that support enterprises in reducing environmental pollution while improving productivity, profitability, and climate resilience.
Under the project, livestock manure is converted into biogas, a clean and renewable source of energy for cooking, heating, electricity generation, or productive use within the enterprise, reducing dependence on firewood, biomass, LPG, and fossil fuels. The residual digestate is processed into nutrient-rich organic fertiliser that enhances soil fertility, improves crop productivity, and reduces reliance on chemical fertilisers. Vermicomposting and tricho composting similarly convert livestock manure and organic waste into high-quality vermicompost using earthworms, creating an additional income-generating product while improving soil health.
Crop residues such as rice straw, husk, vegetable residues, fruit waste, and other biomass are transformed under the project into compost, organic fertiliser, livestock feed, biochar, or renewable bioenergy instead of being openly burned or discarded. This not only reduces greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution but also improves nutrient recycling and enhances climate-smart agricultural practices, while creating new business opportunities for rural entrepreneurs through value-added products. Silage produced from crop residues, particularly pineapple leaves, has opened a new income stream for farmers, who earn from selling the waste while also gaining access to nutrient-rich silage for their livestock. Kitchen and other organic waste are being put to similar use through the culturing of black soldier fly larvae, an emerging practice in Bangladesh in which the larvae are reared on food scraps and other biodegradable residues. Containing roughly 40 to 55 percent protein, the larvae are increasingly processed into a nutrient-dense feed ingredient for fish and poultry, offering a cheaper and more sustainable alternative to conventional feed while diverting organic waste that would otherwise be dumped or left to rot.
Within the manufacturing and processing sectors, production offcuts, defective materials, packaging waste, plastic scraps, textile remnants, paper waste, sawdust, metal scraps, and other recyclable materials are segregated and recycled into secondary raw materials or new commercial products. Plastic waste is processed into recycled plastic products, textile waste converted into reusable fabrics, handicrafts, or insulation materials, metal scraps remelted and reused, and foundry slag recycled into eco-bricks. New business opportunities have emerged in the leather sub-sector, where microenterprises collect and recycle leather waste to produce shoe soles, while in the imitation jewelry cluster, metal scrap and plaster of Paris (gypsum) are recycled and reused as fertilizer. A business venture has developed to produce soap from used cooking oil sourced from the restaurant sub-sector, and fish waste is now used in feed mills to produce poultry feed. These practices reduce landfill disposal, lower raw material procurement costs, and strengthen local recycling value chains.
A similar model has taken root in the country’s hosiery and knitwear waste economy, where scrap fabric, locally known as jhut, is stitched into garments in clusters around Pabna, Bogura, and Naogaon. Small units in these districts convert leftover fabric and yarn from garment factories into T-shirts, shawls, blankets, and other apparel for domestic and export markets, turning discarded textile waste into a significant source of income and employment at the grassroots. These practices reduce landfill disposal, lower raw material procurement costs, and strengthen local recycling value chains.
Through the integration of RECP practices, circular economy principles, renewable energy technologies, and sustainable waste management systems, the SMART project is turning waste into wealth, enabling microenterprises to become more productive, resource-efficient, environmentally responsible, and climate-resilient. This comprehensive approach contributes directly to Bangladesh’s sustainable development goals by promoting low-carbon economic growth, improving environmental quality, enhancing energy security, supporting climate change mitigation and adaptation, and strengthening the long-term competitiveness of the country’s microenterprise sector.
The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author
The writer is a Professor, Department of Environmental Sciences, Jahangirnagar University. E-mail: [email protected]
