Matuail Sanitary Landfill is the first sanitary landfill in Bangladesh. It was a 15 years old dump site, surrounded by agriculture field, fishery & housing. Due to crude dumping, the common scenario of the dumpsite was confined with huge vectors, bad smell, water pollution due to uncontrolled leachate discharge, air pollution etc. After the intervention, a tremendous improvement has been observed. Now smell is less, vectors are reduced, leachate is controlled, and surrounding environment is improved significantly due to controlled and scientific disposal of waste. After rehabilitation of the old dumpsite, the land filling capacity of the almost closed existing landfill has been increased for five years and the extended part of the landfill has secured capacity for another 30 years. From the environmental and socio-economic point of view, the project has contributed significantly for the inhabitants of the surrounding area. Due to scarcity of land for waste disposal and the high price of land in and around the city, the rehabilitation of the existing landfill has added positive value in terms of its cost-benefit proposition and environmental benefits.
During the design and implementation stages many innovative aspects were considered which were suitable to the local context and achieved the required results. Some of these aspects are described below.
(1) Much old waste was excavated in order to reform the slopes, make space for administrative area construction, and develop internal road network. The excavated old waste was used for cover material. This aided DCC very much because of the high purchase and transport costs associated with the import of cover materials to the site.
(2) The haphazard waste dumping was transformed to planned waste disposal through the preparation of the waste disposal platforms, monitoring of amounts of arriving wastes and increasing the skills of the DCC officials. This planned waste disposal ensured the smooth operation at the site, better working conditions and less impact to the surrounding environment.
(3) Working conditions at the landfill is very difficult and risky. The Project greatly improved the working conditions at the landfill through preparation of the operation and management manual, provision of safety gears, holding of training workshops to the staff, provision of first aid equipment at the site and arrangement of medical checkups for the landfill staffs.
(4) The socioeconomic conditions in Bangladesh attract many people to engage in waste picking activities. There are around 200 waste pickers engaged at the landfill. The waste pickers’ working conditions have significantly improved with the introduction of planned operations, stationing of trained waste instructors to control the operation of the heavy equipments and waste trucks un-loading, and planned implementation of a registration system for t he waste pickers.
(5) DCC is not different from other developing cities where financial constraints affect the quality of services. Bearing this in mind, the costs incurred in the introduced system were kept at a level that would not create an excessive burden for DCC, both during development and operation. Local materials were used in the development, and easy to operate treatment systems were adopted.
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