Bangladesh's textile firms turn to technology to sort waste crisis

• Software helps track waste from factories to recyclers
• More recycling could lead to export growth
• Visibility of waste streams key to scaling up recycling

DHAKA - The world's second biggest exporter of clothes, Bangladesh is looking to technology to gain control of the fashion industry's other major product: textile waste.

Cloud-hosted software allows manufacturers to segregate, label and register waste on a digital platform and track it as it passes between factories, handlers and recyclers.

Rizvan Hasan is country lead of Reverse Resources, a company that produces the software.

"Reverse Resources is bridging Bangladesh's waste streams with international recycling markets, ensuring that waste handlers benefit from greater business opportunities and fairer prices," he said.

Bangladesh currently has the capacity to recycle only between 5% and 7% of its pre-consumer cotton and cotton-elastene waste, said a report last year by the German development agency GIZ and Swedish fashion retailer H&M.

It said less than 5% of the waste was upcycled into products such as rag rugs, rag dolls and blankets. But more than 55% is exported, mainly to countries with developed recycling hubs such as Vietnam, Finland, Sweden, India and China.

The rest, the report said, is downcycled into stuffing materials for cushions and mattresses, incinerated to generate electricity and a small amount is sent to landfill.

Recycling more textiles domestically could in turn lead to more exports that the report said could be worth $5 billion.

The European Parliament this month passed a new law requiring producers selling textiles in the EU to cover the cost of collecting, sorting and recycling the waste textiles.

Fashion brands like H&M are therefore requiring the use of more recycled material in their products leaving less waste to be buried or burnt.

This means apparel makers in Bangladesh will have to use more recycled fibre, but currently much of the textile waste is handled by a series of informal handlers, from local influential people often known as "muscle men" to small workshops

The lack of transparency and standardised data on how the waste is handled and recycled has long been a major bottleneck to the industry's sustainability aspirations, said Ayub Nabi Khan, pro vice chancellor of BGMEA University of Fashion and Technology.

"Digital tracking with verified data helps us not only to streamline the textile waste, but also enables us to capture a greater share of its value," he said.

A higher price for waste

Reverse Resources, a European Company with an office in Dhaka, provides a digital platform to suppliers, handlers, recyclers and brands to allow them access to data about waste streams.

"By comparing the amount of waste handed out by factories with that received by formal waste handlers and recyclers, any leakage can be detected," said Hasan from Reverse Resources.

Textile factories get more money for their waste when scraps and yarns are segregated and traced, while brands can track the afterlife of the waste their suppliers generate, he said.

Reverse Resources currently covers 410 factories and more than 60 global brands, about 1% of the market.

Scaling digitalised waste tracing by such platforms in major textile production countries requires faster adoption and integration into existing business practices, said Katrin Ley,

Managing Director at Fashion for Good, a coalition of businesses and non-profits promoting green technologies.

"Through demonstrating the clear business case such as the efficiency gains, the verified feedstock and the data for reporting, their technology can be positioned to scale," she added.

Recyclers from Bangladesh said digital tracing of waste streams will be critical for growing their businesses.

Recycle Raw, one of the country's leading waste-processing businesses, has been working with Reverse Resources since 2019.

Recycle Raw managing director Abdur Razzaque said the platform not only offered definite, segregated volumes of waste, but also allowed him to build direct relationship with factories and bypass informal handlers.

"The greater visibility into the types, colour, and quality of the scraps and yarns that we recycle helps us do business more efficiently," he said.

(Reporting by Md. Tahmid Zami; Editing by Jack Graham and Jon Hemming.)