Waste Concern in Dhaka: Scaling a Model for Urban Waste Management

In March 2006, Iftekhar Enayetullah and Abu Hasnat Md. Maqsood Sinha, the cofounders of Waste Concern, a social enterprise based in Dhaka, Bangladesh, and focused on developing innovative waste management solutions for cities in emerging Asia, faced their biggest challenge yet: scaling up their organization’s activities and impact. The previous fall, working with a Dutch recycling firm, Waste Concern had secured approval from the United Nations and the Bangladeshi government for two projects under the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism, a policy program designed to spur infrastructure investments in emerging countries that would help reduce global greenhouse gas emissions. To move forward with the projects, Waste Concern also required access to the Matuail landfill, which was owned and operated by the Dhaka City Corporation, the city government of Bangladesh’s capital. But despite the projects’ obvious benefits to Dhaka and Waste Concern’s lobbying of key local officials for months, the DCC still had not granted its permission, and it was unclear whether the DCC ever would. The clock was ticking for Enayetullah and Sinha. Was there a way to persuade the DCC to provide access to the landfill so that Waste Concern could pursue the two CDM projects at Matuail as planned? Or would the social entrepreneurs be better off taking a different path to scale Waste Concern’s efforts to address urban waste management and global climate change?