Occupational health safety is an emerging need for waste collectors. Addressing the need ESDO organized capacity-building training for city waste workers to educate them on waste segregation and health safety. Today, total of 18 waste workers participated in the training at Lalmatia, Dhaka.
Environment and Social Development Organization (ESDO), organize this training workshop as part of a series of capacity building under its project “Building Zero Waste Communities for a Pollution-Free Environment in Bangladesh”. The project focuses on Building a Zero Waste community model towards ending environmental health risks and community well-being as well as accelerating the circular economy in Bangladesh.
In the capacity-building training, waste collectors were educated about different types of hazardous waste such as medical waste, e-waste, chemical waste, etc. It was also shown through a flipchart that by not wearing safety materials during the waste collection process, they can be infected by waste. They proposed to use four colors of bins (green, red, yellow, and blue) to segregate different types of waste. The waste workers agreed with the proposal and showed interest in segregating waste in different bins. One of the waste workers Md. Aminul said, “If we work by wearing safety materials, we will be safe from infectious and chronic diseases.” Another waste collector Md. Holud stated that “Segregated wastes in different waste bins will help us to collect waste without hassles. We are currently collecting wastes in one bin manually by using our hands which is injurious to health.”
The principal of Lalmatia Housing Society School and College along with ESDO team members were present in this training session. The whole session was conducted by Sarah Jabeen Kristy, Program Coordinator and Head of Policy Advocacy. At the beginning of the training session, various relevant posters and reading materials were provided to all participants and at the end, ESDO also provided health and safety equipment consisting of rubber gloves, gum boots, masks, and hand sanitizer to every waste worker who joined this session.
Background
Zero Waste is a philosophy and a designed principle that goes beyond recycling to take a “whole system” approach to the flow of resources and waste through human society. It attempts to guide people to emulate sustainable natural cycles, where discarded materials become resources for others to use. Environment and Social Development Organization-ESDO launched a unique and innovative project titled “Building Zero Waste Communities for a Pollution-Free Environment in Bangladesh”.
