Bangladesh going towards circular economy through its fashion waste

As the country’s major part of the economy is dependent on the garment industry, it sees its way to effect change with circularity.

Global fashion Agenda, together with partners this Reverse Resources, and more than 30 other brands, manufacturers, and recyclers have joined hands under ‘Circular Fashion Partnership’ in Bangladesh, this Wednesday. Through this partnership, they aim to find solutions for post-production fashion waste & pandemic sized proportions of fabric deadstock and efficient scale-up for fiber recycling. Brands like Bershka, C&A,  Bestseller, H&M Group, Grey State, Marks & Spencer along with the manufacturers like  Renewecell, Worn Again Technologies, Lenzing and many more have invested in this project.

Miran Ali, BGMEA director, favored encouraging the circular economy and also emphasized the growing demand for circular apparel. Bangladesh’s one advantage in this project is that it typically produces larger volumes of the same item so the waste is more standardized there. Apart from this Bangladesh still has a dismal picture where more than 200 apparel factories closed amid pandemic and lots of workers lost their jobs.

Rubana Huq, president of BGMEA, voiced concern last month over the outright collapse of the industry without official financial resources.