Pilot Program

Service Location

GramClean has been implementing at Chhaygaon Union of Shariatpur district in Bangladesh. Chhaygaon Union has nine wards and out of 9 wards we are working in Ward: 1, 2, 3 & 4. Currently we are covering 295 households (families), 7 primary schools, 1 high school, 1 madrasa and 1 market area of this site under this initiative.

The GramClean Entrepreneur (GCE) and one Garbage Collector are managing the whole process of regular garbage collection, sorting and disposal.

 Table 1: GramClean Service Outreach

Local Village Advisory Committee

An eleven (11) member committee was formed under GramClean project with an objective to make the project sustainable. Time-to-time, the committee members participate in various activities of GramClean project so that village people can be motivated. They take part in awareness raising campaigns and visit door-to-door to the families, talk to the shop owners situated in local village market and try to convey the message of GramClean project objective. They also encourage people to be regular subscriber of this project.

We have further plan to include few female personnel also in this committee so that the project messages can be easily delivered to the female members of a family through the them.

 Table 2: List of Personnel of Local Advisory Committee

Project Organogram

GramClean project has been implementing with a minimum human resources. Four (4) staffs are presently working in this project as regular staffs and among them 2 staffs are based at head office in Dhaka and two staffs are from Chhaygaon Union. After every three (3) months, head office staffs visits project site and activities as part of regular follow-up and monitoring of the project.

Figure 1: GramClean Project Organogram

Garbage Collection Mechanism

Under GramClean project, we collect wastes from (i) household (family) level (ii) from markets (iii) from roadsides/streets and (iv) from schools. The Garbage Collector maintain and follow a schedule of garbage collection. We collect seven types of waste. These are

1. Ash
2. Burnable items
3. Glass
4. Metal
5. Plastic bottle
6. Color polythene; and
7. White polythene

We do not collect perishable/bio-degradable items from the households level instead we advise them to dispose these items in a particular place within their home and we train village women how to create organic/compost fertilizer by these items. As scientifically it is acknowledged that compost fertilizer is very useful for organic farming so these fertilizer can be used or even sold by the household level to the local market. 

(i) Garbage Collection from Household/Family:

 Smaller size waste bins are distributed to the household level so that they can put wastes in that waste bin generated daily. Our Garbage Collector collects wastes from every household as per schedule.

(ii) Garbage Collection from Markets:

Comparatively bigger sized bins are placed in the different parts of the market areas. Currently we are covering Bangla Bazar (latitude and longitude: 23.19547290803286, 90.40647805491793) of Chhaygaon Union. The word “Bazar” is a Bangla word which means market. It is a small village market where village people gather every day to buy/sell products. The Garbage Collector collects wastes from the market once in a week.

(iii) Garbage Collection from Roadsides/Streets:

The same sized waste bins which are placed in the market areas are placed beside the road/street. Garbage Collector collects waste from these bins also.

(iv) Garbage Collection from Schools:

One of the major objectives of GramClean project is to educate school children on waste management. Because it is reasonably easy to make the children understand what is the importance of waste management and the potential health threats due to the absence of waste management mechanism in the rural areas. We targeted school children and hoped that these children would convey the messages of waste management to their parents as well and thus in such way messages would be transmitted and awareness will raise.

We have observed enormous change in children behavioral pattern. Now they do not through wastes here and there rather they dispose waste in the classified waste bins. It is a great hope for GramClean and can be further explained in that way that we are educating a generation.

Garbage Collector collects waste from schools periodically and to inspire children in GramClean project, we distribute note books and pens to the children as promotional materials at FREE of COST.

From the GramClean project, we have given a three-wheeler van to the Garbage Collector so that garbage collection process can be made even smoother.

Payment System

To be a subscriber, one family needs to pay BDT 100 per month; this is the standard rule of GramClean project. But as of now, we couldn’t collect monthly subscription fee from every family. This is one of the major challenge of this project implementation and in terms of project sustainability as well.

People living in urban areas are paying money to the garbage collector every month to keep houses waste free as much as possible. And another reason is, there is no convenient place to dump the garbage by themselves in city area. But village people are used to dump their garbage here and there near their houses. It is a very common practice in every village of Bangladesh. Even they do not know, it could create potential health risks for them. Under GramClean project, garbage collector is collecting wastes from their homes and they should pay for it; which is a new concept for them. Therefore, many villagers do not want to pay yet for this activity. Hence some of the families started to pay subscription fee very recently but it is worthwhile to mention they are paying at the rate of BDT 20 per month which is very insignificant amount to make the project self-sustainable. So to get people familiar with this new culture, we need to give them more time.

Currently we are collecting money from household (family) levels only. So far we have 295 families and according to our project plan we shall cover all of them. In addition to that to make Chhaygaon a Waste Free Model Village we are planning to collect subscription fees from the shop owners also who have their business in the market.

According to our estimation, if we can collect monthly subscription fee from each and every household at the rate of BDT 100 per month the project will be sustainable. And to achieve this goal all the project staffs are working.

Voice of Subscribers