Being a garmenting powerhouse has given Bangladesh an additional advantage, as well as a resource base, that was hitherto not put on paper, and certainly not quantified.
With its large quantity of standardised and cotton-rich textile waste streams, Bangladesh has an immediate opportunity to scale mechanical recycling solutions. More advanced recycling technologies, nevertheless, are critical for a longer-term transition to circularity that will cater to the need of high-quality recycled outputs and explore the future potential to recycle domestic post-consumer waste. This was the backdrop in which the Circular Fashion Partnership (CFP) emerged as a cross-sectorial project led by Global Fashion Agenda (GFA), with partners Reverse Resources, Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA) and Partnering for Green Growth and the Global Goals 2030 (P4G).
The CFP started with the acceptance of the fact that Bangladesh possessed the most in-demand and recyclable waste of any garment producing country, and yet the majority of its waste was being exported. There was a substantial opportunity to make Bangladesh a leader in circularity by scaling the recycling capacity in the country and generating more value from these waste streams.
The first iteration of the CFP project which took place in Bangladesh from October 2020 to December 2021 presented a compelling business case to scale domestic textile recycling, with demand for recycled materials from global brands and to secure consistent access to high-quality traceable post-industrial feedstock from local manufacturers. CFP analysis conducted by Reverse Resources found that virgin cotton imports in Bangladesh could be reduced by approximately 20%, saving US$ 750 million annually if 100% cotton and cotton elastane waste streams were recycled domestically. In 2022, the CFP aims to firm up those ideas into circularity that works.
It is, however, not that the first phase of the project was a walk in the park for one and all. A leader in the recycling ecosystem in Bangladesh is Cyclo Recycled Fibres. Director Mustafain Munir points out a number of challenges. Munir has to buy a lot of the resources from the market, most of which entails cash transactions. “Some people like cash transactions since those are untaxed, but for a business trying to scale up it means using up working capital.”
A lot of the waste gets exported to India, for example. But with more recyclers coming up in Bangladesh, there will be more competition in the domestic market. It could help if there are subsidies for factories which use their waste responsibly through a trace chain, some type of legal protection for recyclers who buy directly from factories so that they don’t have to fear retaliation from various quarters. Things would need to be in place, and Munir stresses on the need “to combat greenwashing and a paper trail certification to make sure things don’t get messed.”
Shehrin Salam Oishee, Director with the Envoy Group, dwells at length on the recycling sector being a new one in the country, and contends that Bangladesh is ready to lead in displaying not just being adaptive to changes, but also ready to incorporate ideas into the systems. “Bangladesh has 157 elite certified green factories, with 47 of them platinum certified. The industry is ready to move to the next level. This new sector is just not a demand of the times but industry as well.”
Shehrin stresses on the need to educate manufacturers, preferably some with green factories, to propagate the idea that recycling is the new thing “which will bring back more into our country.” The first step would have to be a collective initiative by the government and manufacturers. Once everyone is on the same page, foreign investors /buyers would be keen to take a part in this.
But for such collaborations to work, Shehrin feels, Bangladesh is still lagging a bit. Two things are need: first, manufacturers must produce the least amount of waste possible; and second, making that pre-consumer waste into something very useful.
She elaborates: “All manufacturers produce pre-consumer waste. But we never get to quantify which factory produces how much. We need to a proper database (with both the government and companies involved in it) so that we know what amount of pre-consumer waste is being produced. At this moment, only 5% of pre-consumer waste is recycled—actually sorted and sent for recycling. The rest is sent to India or Turkey. So, I buy my own product at a higher rate. Digitalisation in this context would mean that entrepreneurs who produce the waste would have a database to upload to and soon national-level statistics would be available.”
That bit is true. Ann Runnel, Founder and CEO of Reverse Resources, is all for digitalisation which, she believes, can be the vehicle to start the movement. “When we take up digital tools, we can adopt a completely disruptive approach. This is important for any country. An efficient textile circulation system should identify the supply, and connect it with the recycling.” There are too many middles in the current system. Normally waste is collected and somebody sells it to the next party for sorting and on to the next to upgrade to bigger volumes, and then it is sold to a party who has an export licence, another party has an import licence—all these add cost to waste at every step. In principle, underlines Runnel, it should be about only connecting supply and demand first, and then identifying one middleman who can solve the issues of sorting, cleaning and delivering at once.
This takes one to the issue of ownership, which was elaborated in a CFP policy brief: “As the value of textile waste becomes more widely apparent, discussions are raised on waste ownership between manufacturers and brands, as well as between brands producing at the same manufacturing facility and increasingly, recyclers partnering with brands. Brands investing in recycling technologies are engaging their supply chains to support recyclers’ feedstock needs and secure their recycled material offtake. The industry needs to establish a common understanding of waste ownership and criteria for successful circular commercial collaborations to ensure value is fairly distributed and acceleration isn’t deterred.” How Bangladesh handles this will be of interest to the entire world.
