waste concern

They prefer the term ‘garbiologists’, but before Maqsood and Iftehkar revolutionised waste collection and recycling in the capital, friends often jokingly referred to them as ‘garbage men’. ‘A country like Bangladesh cannot afford to look at waste as a problem,’ says Maqsood, ‘it must be looked at as a resource’. The two formed their own company, Waste Concern, which employs garbage-pickers to go door-to-door collecting garbage, and provide compost facilities for slums. They have converted much of the city’s organic waste into soil-enriching fertilisers.