Video Plastic Recycling in Bangladesh

One man's garbage is another man's fortune. In Bangladesh, used plastic bottles that are found in garbage dumps and litter drains and roadside dishes are providing much-needed income to impoverished people. They're also creating a new export commodity for the country. Here's a closer look.

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Over the past five years, the recycling of the Poly Ethylene Terephthalate or PET bottles has steadily grown into an industry in Bangladesh. The extremely poor and street children scavenge the used packaging for food products, beverages and edible oils sell them to factory owners.

The factories sort the bottles and containers into different colors before crushing them into pieces to make plastic flakes, which are in high demand from many Southeast Asian countries. Most of the work is done manually.

[Parveen Begum, Recycling Worker]:
"We have been working in this factory for five long years, we separate colored and white bottles from the dump. Four members of our family are working here and earning our livelihood out of this and living fine by the grace of God."

The flakes are made into fibers and are a base material for clothing, pillows, carpets and polyester sheets.

[Sarwar Wadud Chowdhury, Flake Exporters Assoc.]:
"Poor people collect these non-traditional items from garbage and the roadside and supply them to our factories. In our factory we sort and recycle them to make PET flakes. These PET flakes are exported to China, Korea, Vietnam and Thailand. Our importers make PSF which is known as Polyester Staple Fiber and these Polyester Staple Fibers are used in spinning mills."

Bangladesh exported over 20,000 tons of PET flakes created in the 3,000 factories located across the country. This earned about $10 million last year and the business is growing by 20 percent every year.