Sustainable food drying technologies based on renewable energy sources.

Waste in the food supply chain is estimated to be about 30-40% of the total food production, which aggravates the world hunger and increases waste management burden and environmental impact. Despite the dire food scarcity, majority of this food waste takes place in developing countries because of the lack of appropriate and affordable preservation techniques. Traditional open sun drying is the most popular food-reservation technique to the local farmers due to near-zero capital cost and cheap labor cost. However, this method is highly energy intensive, unhygienic, and time demanding. The high energy consumption resulting from uncontrolled simultaneous heat, mass, and momentum transfer processes in traditional drying systems highlights the necessity of pursuing sustainability in drying process targeting reduced energy consumption, environmental and social impacts. This paper presents a comprehensive review on the sustainable food drying technologies based on renewable energy sources, with emphasis on the developing countries. It was observed that the integration of thermal energy storage with heat pump makes the integrated drying system more efficient, and dries food with better quality. Likewise, advanced integrated drying systems, such as, solar with microwave, and heat pump with microwave make the drying process more cost and quality competent. Finally, impact of resource distribution and governmental incentives for renewable energy use in sustainable drying is discussed.

Survey and analysis of consumers' behaviour for electronic waste management in Bangladesh.

This paper aims to establish consumer's perception of electric waste recycling and management on a national scale in Bangladesh. The attitude, willingness to pay (WTP) and consumers' behaviour were explored by conducting a questionnaire-based survey. The conclusions are based on 915 valid responses out of 2000 online survey invitations. Interestingly, 37.9% of the respondents indicated that they would accept to pay for electronic waste recycling. Analysis also shows that the preferred WTP would cover 5-10% of the recycling cost. Factors like environmental awareness, monthly income, and education level affect the consumers' WTP. Nevertheless, most of the participants believe that the Government should share the recycling cost. The study suggests that e-waste recycling can be stimulated by promoting environmental awareness, educating the public about the benefits of recycling e-waste, and making e-waste recycling more convenient. However, additional measures will likely be needed to tackle the e-waste problem. Thus, support for environmental education is imperative in order to promote environmental awareness and increase the WTP of consumers. The study outlines key characteristics of consumer-focused e-waste management archetypes and proposes an effective road map for Bangladesh.

Towards the effective E-waste management in Bangladesh: a review.

Nowadays, the electrical and electronic products are a crucial commodity for different purposes of daily life and they are multiplying five times faster than human like mobile phones, which has reached zero to 7.2 billion in only three decades. A 5-10% yearly increase in the amount of used electrical and electronic equipment that are disposed of prudently can cause environmental hazards that have an aversive effect on human health, marine life, contamination of groundwater, and reduces soil's fertility. Management of this enormous influx of electrical and electronic waste is a challenge for developing countries like Bangladesh with barebones solid waste management infrastructure. Inadequacy of public awareness, policies and poor budget in the field of waste management are few of the key factors behind this delineating scenario. In this study, the picture electrical and electronic waste productions in Bangladesh along with the recent E-waste management systems have been presented comprehensively. Based on the study, it was concluded that most of the adapted E-waste management methods are conversational and detached from current technological capability. A set of sustainable E-waste management system has been suggested along with the challenges, which might appear during the implementation of these strategies. Successful implementation of these suggested systems would advance the quality of E-waste management in Bangladesh increasing the current 35% overall E-waste recycling rate and offer enormous energy from the waste.