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On a mountain of putrid waste towering above the Dhaka skyline, destitute ragpickers are scavenging for plastic.
For these illegal recyclers, crowded around a mechanical digger as it disgorges scoops of foul-smelling garbage, the two million tonnes of plastic packaging which Bangladesh dumps into the environment every year is the carrion on which they prey.
Treated like parasites in a city gradually drowning beneath the weight of its citizens’ unsorted trash, they nevertheless play a crucial part in a black-market plastic rubbish economy in which toxic fumes and polluted rivers are byproducts.
While the reality of recycling is hidden in the UK once wheelie bins are collected from front driveways, in the Bangladeshi capital it is starkly apparent how plastic is choking a filthy mega-city.
A study by researchers from the School of Civil Engineering at the University of Leeds, published last year, calculated that over 52 million tonnes of plastic waste worldwide is dumped directly into the environment.
More than 70 per cent of this waste comes from just 20 countries, of which Bangladesh is one of the most overwhelmed.
The study ranked Bangladesh sixth in a table of the 20 worst plastic pollution hotspots worldwide, behind India, Nigeria, Indonesia, China and Pakistan. It jettisons 1.9 million tonnes of plastic annually.
In all of those countries overwhelmed by plastic waste, the main problem is that there is no municipal waste collection, so people have no option but to burn, bury or scatter it.
After recent talks between 200 countries to secure binding global targets on plastic pollution broke down without agreement, that statistic is likely to worsen.
Packaging accounts for 44 per cent of all plastic produced worldwide, according to 2022 figures produced by Plastics Europe.
A separate World Bank report in 2021 found that plastic consumption per capita in Bangladesh had tripled over the previous 15 years. In Dhaka, where people use more than double the amount of plastic than those in the rest of the country, that amounts to 22kg a year.
Most of this is from single-use plastics like shopping bags, packs, and wrappers.
December’s negotiations in South Korea, which were supposed to be the last before the first international treaty on plastic waste, reached a deadlock because of objections from fossil fuel states, which refused to accept reductions in production.
Most plastic is made from oil or natural gas.
Although more than 100 countries signed a draft text which included phasing out certain chemicals and single-use plastic products, countries such as Saudi Arabia, Iran and Russia refused to compromise.
In Dhaka, the effect of politicians dithering over what to do with all of this plastic is evident.
With no municipal recycling collection for most of the 24 million people living in the vast metropolis, the ragpickers at the fetid Matuail tip play a crucial role in collecting a tiny proportion of the ever-accumulating plastic debris.
Hawks circle over the dump site – the largest in Bangladesh – where human beings tread warily through the decaying detritus with rats and stray dogs.
Like climbers descending from an expedition, the ragpickers form a human chain to bring white sacks of plastic down from the summit.
The stench is so overpowering that I struggle not to gag beneath my face mask as I observe the unceasing industrious labour. There is constant chatter, despite the danger of the illegal work.
At my feet, bubbles of methane surface through the rubbish-strewn soil.
Digging out the plastic requires real diligence as so much other waste is chucked out here. A quick scan reveals animal carcasses, carpet, insulation foam, mattresses, cardboard, fruit and vegetables, cans of paint and lorryloads of clothing.
One man squatted on the ground nearby tells me he specialises in looking for hair dumped here by barbers’ shops, which he sells on to be reformed into wigs.
Rafiqul Islam, 40, says that he works at the dump with his wife, gesturing towards a group of ant-like figures on a ridge of decomposing litter. He explains that together they earn about £80 a month. It’s money on which they and their two daughters depend, although much of it goes out to a loan shark.
“The worst thing about going through the rubbish is the danger,” Rafiqul says. “I have stepped on a used syringe a few times and had to have a test afterwards in case I had been infected. You have no idea what you’re treading on.
“My wife has terrible breathing problems which we think are probably caused by inhaling methane all day long. It’s a horrible job but we have had to get accustomed to it. Both of us desperately want to get out of this place. We would not want our children to work here.”
“I’ve been here since I lost my job,” says Mohammed Abul Kalam, 45. “My neighbours are here, and they told me there was money to be made from getting plastic. If I can collect 50kg a day I can earn 600 taka (£4).
From Matuail, the plastic is transported in trucks to factory units clustered around the Kamrangirchar Bridge where it is separated, melted down and recycled.
Plastic proliferates here, the raw material for all of the activity in the area, and the source of the thick layer of treacly black sludge choking the river below.
On the far bank over the pockmarked iron bridge, thousands of yellow and white rice bags are hung out, as if to mark the territory of one plastic recycling gangmaster.
Down a narrow, mosquito-infested track I reach a workshop in which slum dwellers Rina Begum and her seven-year-old daughter Yasmin Akter are sorting bottles, under the watchful eye of their employer.
Yasmin is perched on a huge pile of plastic soft drink bottles. Her mother, who is 24, uses a knife to slash off the labels, which are discarded into a basket, as well as the caps. Cooking oil bottles are drained in a separate pot.
The bottles are then sorted by colour until there are enough to fill one-metre-square bails.
Rina does this for her entire 11-hour shift, for which she is paid about £2. Sometimes Yasmin assists her mum, but it is also in this uncomfortably humid and dirty environment – in which wasps are drawn to the sugary soft drink residue – that she and other children try to complete their schoolwork.
To alleviate their boredom, Yasmin and her friend Opria, nine, play games in the piles of plastic.
Opria’s mother, Namita Das, says the backstreet plastic factory was her only option after moving to Dhaka from a rural area when her home was washed away in recent floods, a common story among migrant workers.
“I can earn more if Opria works with me,” Namita explains. “We are paid by how much we sort. Without her it would be a struggle to pay the rent. Breathing the air in this place is not good for her, but I need Opria to be here instead of at school.”
Widow Asia Begum, 55, is working with her grandchildren, Nirab Sarder, nine, and Yamin Sarder, two, at her side. Most of the women in the factory are accompanied by children.
“I’ve been here for 20 years,” she says. “There is more plastic now than ever before. There is never any break. In the summer it gets so hot in here that my head spins, and it becomes uncomfortable to work. I also get chronic back pain from being in the same position all day.
“It’s tough work, but it feels useful. Thanks to us, some of the plastic is not being wasted.”
Men with flattened footballs on their heads as improvised helmets carry these heavy sacks outside to be loaded up for buyers in adjacent units.
At a recycling unit on the other side of the alley, polythene bags are melted down in a furnace, re-emerging as a snake of black squidgy plastic which is then separated into pellets.
These pellets are usually repurposed to make soles for sandals, the owner explains.
A noxious plume from the burning plastic passes through a dazzling shard of bright light from a hole in the tin roof.
Across the river, middlemen dealers hover around a cargo boat from which bails of hard plastic are being unloaded.
On the litter-strewn shore, dogs roam across fields of desiccated plastic chips separated by colour and laid out on hessian sheets, which glint in the bright sunlight like confetti.
This almost pretty scene disguises a squalid, poorly paid industry which most of Dhaka’s citizens are barely aware of. All they know is that their plastic has disappeared somewhere, out of sight and out of mind.
Based on current projections, plastic production is set to triple by 2050, accounting for a huge chunk of global carbon emissions, and hampering efforts to slow climate change.
There are many other cities with similar problems to Dhaka.
Dr Josh Cottom, lead author of the University of Leeds research, says: “At least 1.2 billion people live without waste collection services, forcing them to ‘self-manage’ waste, often by dumping it on land and in rivers, or burning it in open fires.
“The health risks resulting from plastic pollution affect some of the world’s poorest communities, who are powerless to do anything about it.”
Right now, a new deal on plastic pollution seems unlikely, although talks are set to reopen later this year.
While the US previously threw its weight behind an agreement, the Trump presidency means it is now likely to row back, in line with the fossil fuel industry.
“Reducing production is definitely one of the ways that we can stop plastic pollution,” adds Dr Cottom. “I think that has to be within a treaty, and it is potentially one of the stumbling blocks at the minute that people are trying to decide on.
“But it has to go alongside other measures as well, particularly looking at improving the waste management system. It has to be a combination of measures across the plastics life cycle.”
In 2002, Bangladesh became the first country in the world to ban plastic shopping bags. Under its National Action Plan for Sustainable Plastic, its government aims to reduce single-use plastics by 90 per cent by 2026.
In the Kamrangirchar slum, however, the pall of burning plastic is not going anywhere.
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