Solid waste management in urban Bangladesh

In Bangladesh, urban local governments, i.e. city corporations, municipalities are formally responsible for urban waste management. The conservancy department, as an administrative organ of the corporation/municipality, has the responsibility for solid waste management (SWM). In this short paper, an attempt has been made to shed some light on how the conservancy departments of both Dhaka (herein after called DCC) and Chittagong city corporations (herein after called CCC) operate in practice, and therefore also to understand why there is a discrepancy between the ideals and realities. The scope of the paper is limited only to discuss the SWM system of both DCC and CCC and the author collected data and information used here during his fieldwork in June- August 2000.