Companies see sustainable business with agro-waste
FE Report | Tuesday, 13 May 2014
Agriculture experts at a workshop in the city on Monday opined that environmentally and economically sustainable business could be launched with agricultural waste.
With approximately 65 million metric tons of agricultural waste generated per year, Bangladesh faces an agro-waste management predicament. In most of the agricultural and live-stock-rearing regions, the majority of agri and livestock waste is unused and often disposed of in the surrounding environment, causing surface and groundwater pollution, they said.
International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), International Water Management Institute (IWMI) and NGO Forum for Public Health jointly organized the workshop titled 'Business Model and Solutions for Reuse of Agro-waste in Bangladesh' at BRAC Centre in the city.
"Several business models based on waste reuse-if adopted-would benefit private sector organizations engaged in related business, technology developers, governmental department and NGOs".
They said livestock business, for example, could be launched using poultry waste from the country's 120 million chickens to produce energy or compost, which they could use themselves resulting in cost savings. Alternatively, this energy could be sold providing an additional revenue stream.
Moreover, Bangladesh's plentiful maize rice husk waste could be utilized to produce energy or be used in making briquettes. This effective use of waste would help to make these businesses both environmentally and economically sustainable, they added.
Dr. Quazi Forhad Quadir, Head and Associate Professor, Departmental of Agricultural Chemistry, Bangladesh Agricultural University, Dr. Mohammad Tamim, Professor and Head, Department of Petroleum and Mineral Resources Engineering, BUET, Dr. Atiqur Rahman, Associate Professor, Department of Agricultural Chemistry, Bangladesh Agricultural University, Nicolas Syed, Country Programme Officer, Bangladesh, International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), among others, spoke at the function.