On June 9, 2026, Mongabay reported a milestone Bangladesh never sought: the country is now a net importer of electronic waste. Reviewing National Board of Revenue trade data, the outlet found that 40 companies brought in roughly 14,985 tons of e-waste and scrap under customs code HS 8549 between 2022 and 2025, against just 4,040 tons of printed circuit boards exported. Around 90% of those consignments cleared customs on basic documentary checks alone, with only about one in ten pulled for detailed physical inspection (Mongabay).
The headline framing is smuggling and weak border enforcement. That is real. But it obscures the deeper structural driver — and points to a policy lever Bangladesh has so far left untouched: the right to repair and a device-longevity mandate.
The churn, not the border, is the engine
Nearly 90% of laptops sold in Bangladesh's local market are refurbished, and 80–90% of imported electronics originate from China — frequently units rejected in quality control or returned under warranty, then repaired and re-exported as low-cost alternatives, according to Dr. Shahriar Hossain of the Environment and Social Development Organization (Mongabay). These devices have short operational lives. They enter cheap, fail fast, and become waste fast.
That churn is not an accident of bad actors. It reflects genuine demand: a refurbished laptop puts a student or micro-entrepreneur online at a fraction of new-device prices. Treating the inflow purely as contraband to be intercepted misreads the problem. The volume is a symptom of devices engineered — or refurbished — to die quickly, with no domestic mechanism to keep them alive longer.
What the existing rules actually regulate
Bangladesh is not without law. It is a party to the Basel Convention, whose January 1, 2025 amendments now subject both hazardous (code A1181) and non-hazardous (Y49) e-waste shipments to Prior Informed Consent (Basel Convention). Domestically, the Hazardous Waste (E-waste) Management Rules, 2021, issued under the Environment Conservation Act 1995, impose extended producer responsibility, collection targets rising from 10% to 50% over five years, RoHS-style substance limits, and penalties up to 1,000,000 taka or a decade in prison (Enviliance).
Four years on, peer-reviewed analysis finds the framework largely inert — the Department of Environment lacks the staff, training, and recycling infrastructure to enforce it, and no formal public-sector disposal facilities exist (Alamgir & Sayeed, 2022).
Notice what every one of these instruments has in common. Basel governs the border. The 2021 Rules govern the end of life — collection, recycling, EPR. Nothing governs the use phase: whether a device can be cheaply repaired, whether spare parts and diagnostics are available, whether batteries are replaceable, whether a minimum-durability standard applies to imported refurbished goods. The entire regulatory apparatus is built to catch waste coming in and clean waste going out, while ignoring the years in between, where longevity is won or lost.
The case for, and limits of, the import-control instinct
The regulators' instinct deserves a fair hearing. Hazardous e-waste carries lead, mercury, and brominated flame retardants; informal dismantling poisons workers and soil, and Basel's PIC regime exists precisely because rich-world waste has long been dumped on poorer states. Tighter customs screening and a functioning EPR scheme are legitimate, evidence-based responses to a genuine public-health hazard.
But import bans alone fail twice. They fail empirically — 14,985 tons walked through despite an existing prohibition. And they fail distributionally: choke off cheap refurbished devices without an alternative, and you price millions out of digital participation in a country racing to expand internet access. Enforcement that merely shifts trade further underground, where consignments dodge even the 10% inspection rate, worsens the toxic exposure it aims to prevent.
A proportionate, pro-access fix
The more durable policy is to make the devices already in circulation last longer — the core promise of right-to-repair regulation. Bangladesh could amend the 2021 Rules to add three use-phase obligations without restricting affordable access:
- Repairability and parts access — require importers and brands to make spare parts, batteries, and basic diagnostics available for a set period, mirroring the EU's repairability reforms.
- Minimum-durability labelling for refurbished imports — a transparent grade and warranty floor, so buyers know whether a unit has months or years of life, shifting the market toward longer-lived stock.
- Repair-sector recognition — Dhaka already resells an estimated majority of e-waste for repair through informal channels; formalising and training that workforce extends device life while improving worker safety.
This is the proportionate path: it does not ban the cheap computing that Bangladeshis rely on, nor does it pretend customs officers can inspect their way out of a demand-driven flood. It attacks the churn at its source — premature device death — and turns the country's large informal repair economy from an afterthought into the centrepiece of the solution. Border controls and EPR remain necessary. They are simply not sufficient without a right to repair.
Until the use phase enters the statute, Bangladesh will keep treating a longevity problem as a smuggling problem — and keep losing.