As per a study, Bangladesh can save around US $ 500 million a year by recycling cotton waste, produced by textile millers and garment factories in the country, in substantial quantities.
Attended by policy-makers and fashion industry executives amongst others, findings of the study, which has been carried out by the Circular Fashion Partnership — Circular Fashion Partnership is a cross-sectorial project which aims to support the development of the Bangladesh textile recycling industry by capturing and directing post-production waste back into the production of new fashion products and led by the Global Fashion Agenda, in partnership with Reverse Resources and the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA) — were revealed at a virtual discussion held recently.
Further, the report also underlined that if 100 per cent of cotton waste is recycled in Bangladesh, imports could decrease by around 15 per cent, which would translate into saving half a billion US dollar that would have been spent on cotton imports even as in 2019, it added that apparel manufacturing units and fabrics mills produced around 577,000 tonnes of waste, almost half of which was 100 per cent pure cotton waste.
The report also highlighted factories can earn around US $ 100 million by selling the cotton waste to the recycling market.
It may be mentioned here that as per reports, Bangladesh relies heavily on imports of textile fibre and in 2019 the country had imported 1.63 million tonnes of staple cotton fibre, worth around US $ 3.5 billion.