Living on a 'dead' river in Bangladesh

Nurul Islam looks out over Bangladesh's Buriganga River, once a lifeline of the capital Dhaka. Two decades ago, Islam fished the Buriganga's waters. Today, the river has hardly any fish. Instead, the 70-year-old earns a living from selling street food. Thanks to the uncontrolled dumping of industrial and human waste, the river is on the verge of death.

Children play in the sewage that flows unfiltered into the Buriganga. Outside of monsoon season, the river is so polluted that its waters appear pitch black and emit a foul stench. Many of Bangladesh's 170 million inhabitants depend on rivers for a living and transport. Like the Buriganga, many of these rivers and streams are suffocated by severe pollution.

Day laborer Motahar Hossain has no choice but to bathe in the filthy river. Only one in four households in Bangladesh has a running water at home. In 1995, the government made it mandatory for industries to clean their wastewater to halt widespread river pollution — an edict that has been widely disregarded.

Every day, untreated wastewater, fabric dyeing byproducts and other chemical waste from nearby mills and factories flow into the Buriganga. Bangladesh is the world's second-largest garment exporter after China. But the booming industry is also causing the river's ecological demise.

Shahidullah Azim of the Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association told Reuters that all textile factories have their own wastewater treatment plant. There is no way to circumvent this regulation, he said, because international standards must be met. The reality is very different: Here, unfiltered wastewater colored red by textile dye flows from a drain into a tributary of the Buriganga.

Ferryman Siddique Hawlader, 45, lives with his wife and daughter on the banks of the Buriganga. He said the river makes people sick. "Those who bathe in this river often suffer from scabies on their skin. Sometimes our eyes itch and burn."

Water once flowed through this canal in Dhaka into the Buriganga. Now there's so much plastic and other waste that the water can't get through. The dried-up canal bed reveals layer upon layer of garbage. With no waste disposal system in place, people simply throw their rubbish into the canal.

With landfill sites located right next to rivers like the Dhaleshwari, seen here, Bangladesh desperately needs investment in waste management. In Dhaka, the first waste-to-energy plant is scheduled to go online in 2024. Could that begin to turn the tide?