Roughly 3 percent of Bangladesh's electronic waste moves through formal institutions, according to Transparency International Bangladesh. The rest flows into an informal collection-and-dismantling network that stretches from Dhaka's street collectors to scrap shops in Rajabazar and processing rooms in Nimtoli, where women and teenagers break apart laptops with bare hands.

The upstream end of the chain is audible. On Friday mornings, street vendors walk Dhaka's neighborhoods calling out purchases of old laptops, mobile phones and batteries. Collectors like Md Limon, who migrated from Kishoreganj district, sell what they gather to traders such as Md Suman Mia, whose shop sits at the base of a four-storey building in Rajabazar. Suman Mia buys and sells an average of 50 old laptops per month, sourcing from households and in bulk from offices and institutions.

Sorted material then moves down the chain. Some items go for metal separation, some to other buyers, some for reuse. One buyer, Khokon Mia, collects an HP laptop from the shop for resale deeper in the used-electronics market.

Inside Nimtoli's processing rooms

Nawab Katara Lane in Nimtoli, past Chanakharpul General Hospital, holds rows of cramped one-room units stacked with old electronics, wires, circuit boards and chips. In one room, a woman and a teenage boy dismantle laptops without gloves or masks.

The woman has extracted valuable materials from discarded electronics for nearly nine years. She leaves her four-year-old child with the child's grandmother during working hours; the child's father left when the child was one year old. Asked why she works without gloves, she said: "I have got used to it." She reported cuts on her hands, recurring pain and marks on her body, but said she has no choice but to continue.

The teenage boy beside her — roughly 15 or 16 — left school after Class Eight in 2025. Asked why, he answered with a question of his own: "If I study, who will work? Where will I get money?"

No soil, water or air samples from the Nimtoli workplaces were tested, and no workers were medically examined, so toxic concentration levels at the site remain unmeasured. But Professor Dr Ahmad Kamruzzaman Majumder, founder and chairman of the Centre for Atmospheric Pollution Studies (CAPS), warned that unsafe dismantling and burning can release heavy metals such as lead and mercury into the environment, creating skin and lung risks — with higher exposure risks for children and pregnant women. The World Health Organization similarly identifies lead, mercury and cadmium as exposure hazards in unsafe e-waste management.

What leaves the country and what stays

At a crossroads room in Nimtoli, a factory manager separates golden components from small square electronic parts. He said gold is extracted from these components, with goldsmiths in Tantibazar melting them to recover the metal. Motherboard ICs, chips, gold, silver, aluminium and iron are all separated and sold to different buyers; aluminium goes to buyers who remelt it for new products. The manager said chips and some valuable components ship by sea to Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia and China — though no export records, customs data or buyer information were available to verify which components, in what quantities, go where.

Domestic processing continues after metal recovery. Ahmad Kamruzzaman said remaining materials are melted in furnaces for new products, and unsafe melting can spread pollutants. The exact processing methods at Nimtoli facilities have not been verified through technical assessments.

Bangladesh has no updated, comprehensive national estimate of annual e-waste generation; different studies give varying figures. There is likewise no reliable data on how many workers — or how many children — the informal sector employs. Field visits to Rajabazar and Nimtoli found workers of multiple ages, including women and teenagers, collecting, sorting and separating components.

The regulatory ledger

The Department of Environment lists 19 registered e-waste management companies, of which seven hold environmental clearance: JR Enterprise and Messrs Yusuf Enterprise and NH Enterprise in Savar; Messrs Zaman Enterprise in Kadamtali; Azizu Recycling and E-Waste Co Ltd in Fatullah, Narayanganj; Pro Recycling Ltd in Pubail, Gazipur; and MM Enterprise in Jadurchar, Savar. The remaining names — including repeat listings, Protec Electronics Ltd, RFL Electronics Ltd, Kishan Accumulator Ltd and Three MJS and E-Waste Recycling Ltd — appear only on the registration list. No data exists on how much e-waste these facilities actually process.

On the export side, the Department of Environment approved the export of 47,160 metric tonnes of e-waste in 2025 under the Basel Convention's Prior Informed Consent procedure. How much was actually shipped, and by which companies, is not on record.

Enforcement on the ground is thin. Md Shamsur Rahman, an inspector with the Department of Environment's Monitoring and Enforcement Wing, said regular inspections are not carried out at Rajabazar and Nimtoli facilities; inspections happen only when complaints arrive. Rajinara Begum, managing director of the department's Waste and Chemical Substances Division, said the department views recycling positively whether a facility is registered or not. Officials said they had no information on illegal exports. Bangladesh's E-waste Management Rules, 2021 remain the governing framework, but implementation and monitoring of informal facilities remain open questions.

Dhaka South City Corporation adds another gap. Dr Mohammad Safiullah Siddique Bhuiyan, supervising engineer of its Waste Management Department, said the city corporation operates no separate household e-waste collection system — households typically sell old electronics. He knew of two or three facilities doing this work in Nimtoli but had no total count or trade-licence information. Battery waste, dust, ash and broken screens are left to generators to manage, he said, though the government is working further on the issue. Collectors have been instructed to use aprons, gloves and masks, but many decline. The workers observed during the Nimtoli visit wore none.

What decides what happens next

Ahmad Kamruzzaman called for soil, water and air sampling around processing areas to identify lead and mercury concentrations, alongside health examinations and exposure assessments for workers. Masks and gloves alone, he noted, do not eliminate risks — controls must match the equipment handled and processing methods used.

The structural question is what the 2021 rules amount to without inspection cadence, throughput data from the 19 registered recyclers, or verified Basel Convention export records. With 97 percent of the stream informal, any transition also has to carry the workers already in it — the woman dismantling laptops bare-handed and the boy who left school in 2025 — rather than simply licensing new capacity around them. The next measurable markers are the first documented inspections of Nimtoli, published export figures against the 47,160-tonne approval, and any throughput reporting from the registered seven with environmental clearance.