DHAKA, July 26 (Xinhua) -- The famous expression "One man's trash is another man's treasure" in fact holds true for the hundreds of thousands of people who are engaged in Bangladesh's thriving Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET) recycling industry.
Promila, opting to use just her first name, hails from northeastern Bangladesh's Kishorganj district and has come to the capital city of Dhaka for a job in which no experience is necessary.
The young lady, struggling against a backdrop of devastating poverty, has finally managed to secure a job in a PET recycling factory and is earning a modest, yet livable 1,000 taka (just less than 13 U.S. dollars) weekly.
The former villager told Xinhua shyly, "I work here to earn three square meals a day for my two girls," adding that she is also grateful to receive some snacks at work, besides just a pay cheque.
Forty-Two-year-old Rukhsana Begum, meanwhile, is also working at a PET recycling factory.
Begum, a widow, who does not have any other marketable skills by which to earn a living has also easily managed to land this job in the factory.
"I dry the flakes in the sun that will be used later to become Polyester Staple Fiber (PSF), which are used in spinning mills," Begum said, adding that she also gets paid 1,000 taka a week.
"I need to earn money for myself and to support my poor parents living in my village home."
Promila and Begum like many others have been working in the hundreds of factories making flakes and granules from used polythene.
In Dhaka, poor women, young children and those bordering on being homeless, can often be seen collecting pet bottles from every nook and cranny of the city and its dumping grounds. Business is booming in the PET recycling industry, owing to the increasing amount of shipments of pet flakes by local recycling entrepreneurs particularly to China, South Korea, Vietnam and Thailand, as well as elsewhere in the world.
Sector insiders say Bangladesh's thriving PET recycling industry exports tens of thousands of tons of PET flakes, the shredded version of plastic bottles, annually, which are sorted at some 3,000 factories across the country dedicated to recycling.
There are hundreds of recycling factories in and around Dhaka alone which procure the waste PET bottles from primary collectors either directly or indirectly
Once the PET bottles have been sorted, crushed and converted into PET flakes, they are prepared for shipping to the export destinations where they will be used to make PSF, which are used in spinning mills.
PSF is a base material for clothing, pillows, carpets and polyester sheets. Around the world, about 1.5 million tons of PET are collected per year, the majority of it in Europe.
The poor here survive by collectively gathering around one hundreds tons of PET bottles a day in Dhaka and from elsewhere in the country.
"We bring get the polythene from different places in the country. After crushing them, we make granules. These granules are used mainly for making toys. A number of companies and factory owners buy the granules from us," Mohammad Hossen told Xinhua.
"I also personally work with my staff to earn some extra money," said Hossain, owner of the tiny factory that employs around six people.
Another recycler in the city, Emran Hossain, has been in the business a long time.
His company 'Dhaka PET' procures PET bottles from different places around the country
"We make flakes after crushing and cutting as per our customers' demands. We principally export to China and our customers there are our biggest and most important," Hossain, the veteran recycler told Xinhua.
Some workers can make 3,000 taka weekly, some 2,500 taka, others less," he said of his 15 hardworking factory workers.
"But those who just clean the bottles only get about 1050 taka," Hossain said.
More and more people in the country are getting involved with the PET recycling business as the sector has a huge growth potential in the global market, sources with knowledge of the situation have said.
According to the country's Export Promotion Bureau (EPB) data, the country earned more than 22 million U.S. dollars in the last fiscal year from the PET recycling business.
