A two day long workshop has been held on 08-09 May in a city hotel here in Dhaka on Greening the Supply Chain of textile and apparel industry. The event was organized by The World Bank, International Finance Corporation (IFC) & Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). The title of the event was “Greening the Supply Chain of the Textile Industry in Bangladesh” which was punched by “Opportunities to Reduce Pollution and Enhance Savings in Textile Factories: Preliminary Results Workshop”. The workshop was showcasing the results of the different projects taken by World Bank, IFC & NRDC to find out the opportunities to do greener production in the textile supply chain. NRDC is a US based NGO who has been running a project title “Responsible Sourcing Initiative (RSI)” in China which was great success.

Panel discussion at the second day of the workshop

They could come up with ten best practices for Energy, Water & Chemical conservation in the textile manufacturing industries. Recently they are running a similar project here in Bangladesh. The workshop was mainly show casing the preliminary results of that project. The Bangladesh RSI is being anchored by The World Bank with close supervision of NRDC. A consortium of consultants was working from last November eight textile industries to assess their performance in terms of Energy, Water & Chemical conservation to find out the best possible recommendations for them to achieve greener production practices. Leading buyers like Walmart, H& M, M& S & Livis are the partner of RSI and duly present in the workshop to present their initiatives to achieve sustainability by greening the supply chain. Among the participating factories some has presented their initiatives as well to reduce energy, water & chemical use in their operations.

As per World Bank “The Bangladesh Responsible Sourcing Initiative for the Textile Industry seeks to promote cleaner production and energy efficiency in Bangladesh's textile industry, by simultaneously reducing the environmental impacts associated with industrial pollution in local watersheds and increasing the economic access to key global markets.  Building on lessons from the China initiative, the Bangladesh RSI will also aim to develop closer synergies with government who can help provide a more enabling policy framework and play a key role in monitoring environmental management practices down the supply chain.”

Textile, Washing and Dyeing Sector is a major contributor of water pollution

Catherine Tovey, Senior Water Resources Specialist (World Bank) started the activities of 8th May with the welcome note. In her speech she exposed the size and impact of the textile & RMG industry on the socio economic and also on the environmental condition of the country. She mentioned that there are 12 million people right now in Dhaka which is going to be 22 million by 2025. There are 7000+ industrial units in and around the Dhaka city. She pointed the textile sector as second major contributor of river pollution after tanneries. Textile industries are discharging 2 million m3 effluents every day. She also illustrated that underground water level in Dhaka city is going down quickly.

Catherine Tovey, Senior Water Resources Specialist(World Bank)

To ensure greener growth, she emphasized to come out from the traditional approach of meeting environmental standards by establishing ETP’s; as that approach fall short due to weak Department of Environment (DoE) supervision, control and enforcement. She suggested the new approach which is a mixture of Market based approaches & voluntary compliance which is basically reducing at source hence ensuring energy, water & chemical conservation. This new approach can be enforced by Customer demands for increased sustainability, cost-savings opportunities. That’s what the RSI is. RSI identify best practice cleaner production options which maximize savings and reduce waste. Its goal is to encourage textile factories to adopt better environmental management practices to reduce industrial pollution in Dhaka watershed by develop a platform to share best practices with new partners, each with their own leverage point.

Promoting Cleaner Production in the Textiles Sector by IFC

Naureen Chowdhury from International Finance Corporation (IFC) has presented the summery of the cleaner production project anchored by them. In the project they have focused to the wet processing industries. As per she says, there are 1700 such units in the country which is employing 200,000 workers and has 10% growth that give 12-20% value addition to the products. IFC is doing Cleaner Production (CP) practices implementation by user group approach and factory specific consultancy. They were doing some user group meeting at the presence of mid level executives from different companies to talk about one topic. In the open discussion they were finding the ways to improve and at the same time get motivation to implement CP practices.

Naureen chowdhury, Operations Analyst, IFC

Common findings from pilot factories from pilot factories

Wastage of water-as usage is 15-18% higher than is required

Data constraintslimited benchmarking of usage patterns

limited use of flow meters (gas, water)

Potential for insulating pipelines, valves

Potential to replace faulty steam traps

Potential to replace magnetic ballasts in lighting system

Potential to standardize the storage and disposal of waste

In the pilot factory of implementation they achieved significant improvement in chemical spillage management, handling & housekeeping; steam pipeline insulation; steam trap replacement & repairing; water consumption in the process etc. To give an overview of the savings Naureen has pointed out that the pilot factory has reduced their water use to 186 Li/kg from 290 Li/kg; electricity use 2.1 KWh/kg from 2.84 KWh/kg; gas to 0.8m3/kg from 1.15 m3/kg and carbon footprint to 1.8 kg/kg from 2.6 kg/kg. In the IFC presentation Top 4 CP recommendations for textile industries are:

• Steam trap maintenance



• Insulation of un insulated steam and condensate return pipelines



• Insulation of valves



• Condensate recovery

Preliminary findings of the Bangladesh RSI

Consultants Derko Kopitopoulos & A S M Tareq Amin from the consultants consortium Ecopsis-Sofies-HB of the Bangladesh RSI of NRDC, have presented the preliminary outcomes of the project. The project was titled as “production efficiency/ pollution prevention factory assessments for fabric mills and dye houses in Bangladesh”. Criteria of the project were to Reduce, Reuse, in the upstream of the operation and to Recycle and Recover in the downstream of the operation. In the presentation, the findings were shown into two parts. The low hanging fruits are the practices those are easily implementable, cheap and payback shorter than one year. The other class was the best of the best practices which comprise of best practices prevailed in the Bangladeshi factories which are also implementable to other factories but that may require higher investment but still the payback is within two years.

Susan Keane, Senior Environmental Analyst(NRDC) is summing up the outcome of the RSI, Bangladesh

Within the project the team has investigated the factories on 30 issues or savings opportunities which were divided into major savings area i.e. water, energy, chemical & transversal. As per the study the top recommended low hanging fruits are:

• Eliminate water leaks in taps and pipes



• Reuse water drained out of steam condensates



• Minimize washing and rinsing (overflow) operations



• Reuse of the first wash water from solution preparation tanks



• Restrain hose pipe use and create a central cut sample washing place.



• Insulate steam pipes



• Optimize operation of air compressors and chilling plants



• Use transparent roofs



• Reduce spillage of chemicals



• Use of magnetic device for soft water in boiler.

Best of the best top recommended practices are:

• Increase fabric to water ratio to 1:6



• Maintenance of steam traps (Proper steam management)



• Automatic boiler blow down mechanism



• Recovery of sodium sulfate



• Improve process control stages to avoid reprocessing



• Improve trial recipe in laboratory

Each of the recommendation has shown with explanation by mentioning potential savings.

H& M Sustainability is about Balancing                           

Pail Jain, Regional CSR Manager of H& M was presenting their sustainability activities. As per her presentation H& M sustainability efforts are illustrated here.

H& M is one of the largest buyers of clothing providing fashion and quality at the best price worldwide having approximately 2200 stores across 38 countries. This value driven company was found in 1947 which now posses 76,000 employees. Bulks of its products are collected through supply chain having 700 suppliers worldwide. They have certain policies to contribute making the textile world greener and safer. Within their CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) activities, they have a strong code of conduct since 1997 working with social and environmental requirements applicable to all the products, transport and sales in the supply chain and design programs for sustainability. H& M sets the company standards and goals, develop social & environment friendly policies and develop sustainability strategies in the line with company goals. It also monitors total compliance, measure results and publish report. Sustainability is achieved by balancing between profit, planet and people. Not only the company employees but also the customers and the supplier’s employees are taken in account as the term people. It guides the current and future opportunities that the company profit provides. The impact of sustainability star ts from choice of material to the waste management including processing-production and the environmental impact from process, transport, IT, HR, finance, possibility to recycle and garment care. They are trying to ensure sustainability in their product development and design and also taking part in better cotton initiative (BCI); using recyclable cotton, wool, polyamide and polyester etc.  Now they are promoting organic cotton as well. Almost 15000 ton organic cotton was used last year by H& M and sourcing all cotton from sustainable resources by 2020 is their vision. They are working against the child labour under the roof of UNICEF starting from cotton cultivation to garments production. At present an ante-child-labour program is running in Tamil Nadu, India. They spent 4 to 5 million USD last 5 years engaging and educating customers and employees about children’s right in cotton production. They have a strong code of conduct and they sign the code precondition before any business relation. Full audit programs are also running since2005. Audit results integrate the buying decision. Till 2010 there are 2561 audits (59% unannounced). From these audits the main problems came out as overtime, overtime compensation, chemical handling. They are working with the problems to maintain a standard compliance.

Payal Jain(H & M)

H& M Audit focuses on the following things:

The code of conduct requirements, which are-

• Legal requirements



• Prohibition of child labour



• Health & safety



• Workers right



• Working environment



• Housing



• Environmental requirements

Visual inspection

Review of documentation

Interviews with workers and management

Management system analysis

Audits are done starting from the cotton traders (cotton seed farms, cotton farmers), spinning mill, fabric mill, dyeing mill to the finished garment producers regarding the points given before to select the supplier. So a supplier must have to satisfy those codes of conducts to get H& M orders.

But their sustainability activities are not confined only in auditing. Motivating upstream measures are taken which leads to water usage and resources, like water saving technique in denim washing, cleaner production program and cleaner production tool are the things they are doing along with auditing. At least 30 liters of water have been saved per denim in 2010 by using a special chemical which results to a 50 million liters of water saving.

H& M is running programs for internal and external capacity building and management, collaborating with other brands and organization, awareness raising by example films of workers and also community investments for education, & health among women and children.

An eye is also given to the logistics and distribution. Sustainable transport and clean shipping project for lesser emission of CO2 in air and water, H& M has increased use of train and decreased use of air freights. Minimizing packaging for the products and creating restricted chemical list (250 substances).

CFL’s are used to reduce energy consumption for interior and displaying materials. Hangers reuse is close to 100% in the H& M stores.

Thus the company is moving towards increased sustainability and a growth target of 10 to 15% per year.

Wal-mart operating, buying and selling for less

Mr. Lyantha Tennakoon Hewage, Senior Fabric & Color Manager from Wal-mart gave a speech on initiatives of their company towards greener textile at the workshop. He pointed out the following things.

Wal-mart is one of the biggest companies in the world having 9000 units worldwide, 4418 units in the USA alone, has serious commitment regarding environmental sustainability. Starting from 2005 with CEO Lee Scott and continuing with the current CEO Mike Duke, Wal-mart has taken a strong lead to reduce its environmental footprint across the world. As one of the largest companies of the world, with an expanding global presence, and with customers over the world shopping at their stores and clubs they are in a position to help the people to save money and live better while playing a positive role in the communities. The CEO Mike Duke says-“ At the height of the recession, we promised we would broaden and accelerate our commitment to sustainability. Today sustainability is sustainable at wal-mart.” They are continuing to meet the social obligations and expectations ahead.

Lyantha Tennakoon(Wal-Mart)

According to Lee Scott from they are committed –

• to be supplied 100% by renewable energy



• to create zero waste



• to sell products that sustain people and the environment

Wal-mart is growing its sales through operating, buying and selling for less. And practicing 360 sustainability through their associates-operations-suppliers-communities-& customers.

To take their continuous sustainability program ahead a sustainability network is built with wal-mart associates, non-governmental organizations, academics, government agencies and supplier companies. Network captains (Director or vice President level) guide network efforts and drive initiatives toward goals. Members of the sustainability team oversee network activities, align overall efforts according to the provided guidance and the quarterly updates are provided through executive management.

Wal-mart reports of regular progress towards goals with global sustainability shows-

• 21st century leadership speech was delivered by the company CEO in 2005



• Launched packaging scorecard and set a goal to sell 100 million CFLs in 2006



• Sold more than 137 million CFLs  and 1st sustainability report published in 2007



• Plastic bag waste reduction goal set, China sustainability summit and 35% fleet efficiency achieved in 2008



• Sustainable product index announced, seeded funding for sustainability consortium, met goal to design and open store prototypes that are more efficient and reduce GHGs and 60% fleet efficiency achieved in 2009



• Global GHG goal set, global sustainable agriculture platform launched and 65% fleet efficiency achieved in 2010

As one of the largest companies in the world, Wal-mart has put a deep commitment to operate more sustainability into practice through some specific public pledges. The Responsible Sourcing Initiative is very consistent, because the suppliers will be aiming to reduce the use of energy and water, and the amount of waste produced, during textile manufacturing, which has a big impact on those resources. In 2008 hard goals and deadlines were set for the operators in China. As a result Wal-Mart’s top 200 factories in China would achieve 20% improvement in energy efficiency and all direct suppliers would be required to source 95% of their productions from factories that receives the highest ratings in audits for social and environmental practices by 2012. They are also committed to reduce 20 million metric tons of carbon usage from the factories of its supply chain around the world by 2015. This is equivalent of taking almost 4 million cars off the road for a year.

The manufacturing of apparel especially the dyeing and finishing of fabric─can take a heavy roll on the environment both in terms of water and in terms of energy. Wal-mart is especially looking to adopt the RSI recommendations and to reduce resource use in this sector.

Wal-mart has been working with the Natural Resources Defense Council on its Responsible Sourcing Initiative for more than three years now and has strong and enthusiastic supporters of their work. They are achieving excellent cost savings and efficiency improvements that will reduce environmental impact and save the industry money.

Marks & Spencer establishing eco factories

Marks & Spencer is a large fashion house sourcing almost 38% of their total products from South Asia including Bangladesh. According to their economic update given during the WB conference on cleaner productions in textile at Dhaka they have considered Bangladesh as the 2nd largest exporter of garments from south Asia. Almost half of their kids wear, Men’s footwear, Men’s casual and all the autograph leather handbags are sourced from this region.

As their major sourcing destination they are working to maintain sustainability and compliance in this region. In this regard they have a program named ‘Plan A’ which focuses especially in this region.

In order to implement the plan first they have recognized some economic and external factors influencing this region. The major factors are- increase in the raw materials price especially in cotton price and the ban on export of cotton and yarns. In the last few years the cotton price has increased by 111%. Another major problem in compliance is the garment worker wage, although it has increased considerably (about 80%) in Bangladesh. It has increased from $16/month in March’10 to $28/month in November’10, but it should have been adjuster much earlier. Wages have gone up by an average 15% in India also. There is shortage of skilled labour, as other industries are becoming more attractive. There is also ethical non-compliance & push for living wage by NGO and media. Increase in logistics and freight cost is another main problem. A huge growth in the domestic market is also a great influencing factor. But the capacity of good quality is shrinking.

Najeeb Sayed(Marks & Spencer)

Marks & Spencer is moving towards their ‘Plan A’ goal already establishing 3 & 11 eco factories in Sri Lanka and India respectively. “Think Green’ audit has started from April 2011. Better cotton initiative is taken by 50% reduction in water consumption, 50% reduction in fertilizer consumption and 35% reduction in use of pesticides in cotton cultivation. Prevention of use of child labour is also included in the BCI. To maintain a fair living wage, 6 field surveys’ have been taken place on inspirational wages. Data has been collected from 19 factories for statistical model for arriving at living wage. Marks & Start has made difference to disabled people is South Asia. About 850 disabled people have received help from the company.

Many factories now in their supply chain are adopting ‘Plan A’ and implementing the conducts to meet the challenge of the increasing demand of sustainable products. Marks & Spencer is going ahead with innovation and newness towards a better clothing world.

Levi’s build sustainability into everything

Mr. Pankaj Kapoor from Levi’s showed how their company is contributing for greening the supply chain of the textile industry. Levi’s is one of the biggest global denim brand which was found in 1853 by Bavarian immigrant, Levi Strauss. It has 60,000 retail locations worldwide with 10,500 employees. The supply chain consists of 875 contracted factories with 315,000 workers around 45 countries.

Levi’s is contributing towards greener textile as their vision is to build sustainability into everything they do so that their profitable growth helps to restore the environment. As a denim producer they have done a life cycle assessment of their product to assume how much water & energy they are using per piece of denim and what measures can be taken to reduce it. The LCA report published in 2007 shows the following results:-

32 kg of CO2 is equivalent to-

• 78 miles driven by the average auto in the USA



• The carbon sequestered by six trees

3480.5 liters of water equivalent to-

• Running a garden hose for 106 mins



• 53 showers(7 mins shower)



• 575 flushes of a 3.78liter/flush low flow toilet

400.1 MJ of energy equivalent to-

• Watching TV on a plasma screen for 318 hours



• Powering a computer for 556 hours, which is equivalent to 70 work days (8 hour work day)

In order to reduce the resource usage Levi’s has set some goals. Firstly, to achieve carbon neutrality by implementation of energy reduction initiatives and the use of 100% renewable energy first in the operations and then throughout the supply chain, reduce water usage and improve water quality throughout the product life cycle. They want to evolve into a zero-waste   company offering customers sustainable products. To reduce the environmental impact the company has strong commitment to reduce the chemical usage in the production of all the Levi’s product and throughout the product life cycle.

According to Mr. Pankaj Kapoor they have already achieved significant sustainability milestones. They have been able to use organic cotton blended into denims since 1997-1998. They are following the global effluent guideline (GEG) since 1995. In 2006 they have produced Levi’s eco-jeans. The LCA report was published in 2007 which is mentioned before. They have set new global environmental sustainability visions in 2008 to take their green initiative ahead faster. In 2009 they managed to produce sustainable product and practice sustainability in the retail and reduced their corporate footprint. Levi’s is providing leadership to encourage other companies, customers, governments and civil society organizations to address environmental sustainability.

DBL Group implements Cleaner Production Practices

DBL group is one of the biggest textile garment manufacturing group in the country. As per as the greener practices are concerned, the group has made significant achievements in its factories. Hmza & Maimun Textile Ltd. two modern knit fabric processing mills of the group are selected as one of the Top performing industry in the Bangladesh RSI.

DBL group has presented their present and future cleaner production initiatives at the WB workshop. They have presented a comparison between their resources usage of 2010 and 2011 to show how and how much they have achieved towards a cleaner and cheaper production. DBL group is among the largest vertically integrated knit garments manufacturing industry in Bangladesh exporting garments around 42 countries in the world. They have H& M, Walmart-George, Puma, Esprit, G-star and other big names in their buyers list

DBL has achieved a considerable amount of reduction in water and power usage this year as the table shows below:

These positive changes are brought as the result of adopting environment friendly and economic processes at the DBL factories.

Some of the key initiatives are as follows:

1. To minimize the washing and rinsing operation they are using 3 effective rinses instead of 4-5 rinses (normally practiced) and the water used per rinse 6 ltr/kg while average industry practices 21 ltr/kg.

2. Using SCLAVOS dyeing machines which reduce the water ratio from 1:8 to 1:6.

3. Using water trigger nozzles to prevent water wastage.

4. PLEVA moisture controller in dryer and stenter to determine moisture content of fabric and                       temperature required to dry it.  Thus ensuring the optimum use of gas and electricity.

5. Using magnetic device for water softening which results to a scaling reduction of 0.5 mm/year saves Tk 300,000/year at least.

6. Automatic boiler blowdown mechanism to increase boiler efficiency.

7. Regular insulation and leakage repair.

Fig: PLEVA Humidity Analyzer

Fig:PLEVAMoistureController

Beside these they are also using energy efficient lighting system and have commitment to reduce carbon emission by 15% by next three years. They have a four member team involved in optimizing water and electricity usage and also trainee employees on energy and environmental aspects within the industry.

Major energy, water & chemical conservation practices are taking place in Epyllion

Epyllion group is one o the biggest textile venture in Bangladesh with a capacity to produce 30 ton high quality fabric and 125,000 pieces of readymade garments per day. They are practicing strong sustainability activities according to their presentation at the WB workshop in Dhaka.

They have given a great importance to savings from lightings in their factories. They have a plan to save  61 kwatts of energy by using new energy lights throughout 2,70,000 sft floor area, which will lead to 25.90 ton reduction of carbon footprint per month.

They are going use hot water generation system from exhaust gas of generator producing 45m3/h hot water at 700 c where they are saving 900,000 tk monthly through less usage of natural gas.

They have rain water collection system and to reuse it. 193,500 sft of roof space is used to collect and reserve the rain water saving 22,814 m3 of water which can dye 190 tons of fabric. Also installed cooling water recovery system from dyeing machines and condensate return system & reuse in boiler feed water to save energy.

They have wet slitting with enzyme dust cleaning system which leads to healthy dust free working area is first of its kind in Bangladesh. Combi-dye and combi-polish (single stage) is practiced to reduce lead time and save resources.

Eco-soaping and eco-cleaning process saving energy and water which is the invention of their

Sinha textiles take CP initiatives

Sinha textile group presented their challenges in greening the supply chain of the textile industry of Bangladesh at the workshop. They have taken some initiatives to reduce the resource usage and cleaner production in their factories. They are as following:

• Maximum utilization of sunlight during day



• Power saving lights are used



• Using control valves in each steam inlet valves



• Using flow meter in each steam and water supply line



• Using the exhaust heat by re-circulating into the dryer and boiler by co-generation method



• Using wash water pushing back into the dyeing machines as possible and when possible



• Using auto pressure regulating valves to control over/under pressure of compressed air and steam



• Using soft water in boiler and other process

All the processes have made production in Sinha textiles cheaper and friendly to the environment.

Libas textiles; the factory is in implementation

Executive Director of Libas textiles, Mr. Mizanur Rahman presented their cleaner production opportunities at the WB workshop held in Dhaka. They have a mission for continuous improvement of their product and system through efficient utilization of resources and reviewing their quality objectives. Primark-UK, Trade Up-UK, Tesco-UK, HRTM, C& A-Germany, Knight Apparels-USA are their main clients.

To meet the desired quality of their buyers they have implemented some efficiency measures.

They have installed magnetic devices to boilers to generate soft water reducing scaling in the boiler results no chemical cost. A continuous maintenance process is going on to eliminate water leaks and pipes to reduce water wastage.

They have been awarded global certificates for their initiatives taken for cleaner production.

They have some proposed measures to be taken in the near future like, to reduce steam loses from traps and leakages. They have estimated a yearly savings of BDT  1,622,000 from there. Minimize washing and rinsing operations which can save BDT 1,723,000. Reuse of cleaning water of solution preparation tanks possible to save BDT 54,000.

The Bangladesh RSI has selected Libas for implementation as a pilot project. The experience of Libas will shared with to encourage and lead the scaling up of the other factories to implement CP practices for greening the textile factories.