Industry has contributed to serious and widespread deterioration in the quality of water, land and air in Bangladesh. The objectives of the study are: to document pollution prevention options and their current use in Bangladesh; to compare practices across five different highly polluting industries; and to contribute to the pollution prevention literature from a developing country's perspective. The study is an exploratory one, using both primary and secondary data. Five industries were selected from the top-ten environment polluting industries in Bangladesh; these are the tannery, pulp & paper, fertilizer, textile and cement industries. From each industry group, two sample plants were selected with five executives participating from each plant. This study highlights the reality of Bangladeshi industrial plants in applying pollution prevention initiatives. It reveals that compared to leading firms in developed countries, pollution prevention initiatives in Bangladesh are considerably underutilized. All of the industries undertook some pollution prevention activities, though each of them had potential for improvement. For example, none of the case sites engaged in pollution prevention through designing environmentally compatible products. © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.