Textile Today Question of the Month
Recently a voice raised in the community, should textile & apparel factories pay water tax for the water they use? How do you see the proposal and how can we keep our water secure in the long run?
Water is a must in textile production and garments washing. Plenty of water is being used in every step of the textile supply chain. Almost 5,196 liters of water are used to produce a pair of jeans, which, in many cases, will sell for less than 30 euros. And to dye 1kg of knit fabric more than 200 liters of water are used.
Usually, factories take water from nature and pollute it but do not pay for this most precious of resources. Their used water is often spewed out untreated that pollutes the local environment, agriculture and the water of local communities.
Md. Nurul Momen, Director, Pioneer Denim Limited
I am fully agreed and aligned with the voice-if some autonomous bodies take the responsibility to neutralize. In our mill, we used to treat 6000 cubic meter water a day in our ETP and also treat with reverse osmosis. We return the treated water to nature through our built-in duct resulting our mill has been rewarded as the ‘World’s largest LEED platinum-certified textile mill’.
All the textile and garment industry must have ETP to neutralize the used water before disposal and if possible, to treat with reverse osmosis in order to make it reusable. Apart, rainwater harvesting also should be practiced. On the contrary, the government should develop the infrastructure to practice water recycling. Our textile industry is not properly patronized so far which the top revenue is earning sector to our national economy.
Sayed Nurul Islam, Chairman, Well Group
We are already tired with multiple taxes. So, we cannot think of this type of unrealistic demand. Definitely, water is an important factor for our industry. I think awareness is important to save our own resources to ensure sustainability.
Engr. Abdus Sobhan, Managing Director, AUKO-TEX GROUP
We should speak about our water and environment used for fashion brands. As the groundwater level is constantly going down in our country.
In this regard, we need to develop awareness among all the stakeholders, at the same time, technological development has to be created. A new commercial scale dyeing technology for dyeing synthetic fabric, DyeOx, has been implemented in Taiwan that utilizes carbon dioxide (C02) instead of water in the dyeing process.
The factory that is the subject of this case study installed two machines that produce 920000 kg of fabric per annum and resulted in a reduction in water withdrawals of 8256000m3 when benchmarked against conventional dyeing methods. Similar way, other processes have to be developed so that we can save our highly valued water and also our environment.
Azahar Khan, Chairman, Mithela Group
How they think about to impose water tax without the proper process in conservation of water and economic development of a country! You will see in foreign countries the government give investment for central ETP. But in this country I give 27 crore taka for ETP plant treatment.
We are reusing 50% of recycled water and rests are released through river. But in our country, there are many industries who are not properly concerned about water treatment.
So Government should give incentives to them who are investing for water treatment, then it will be sufficient to balance of wasting water.
Fazlee Shamim Ehsan, Managing Director, Fatullah Apparels Ltd
Good idea ‘Water Tax’ but need to establish worldwide, otherwise, some countries might lose competitiveness. Also, consumer needs to change their mindset to enjoy attire with less price.
Nowadays, most of the knit Dyeing factories are concerned about liquor ratio to reduce the chemical cost, ETP cost and environment pollution. So, they are purchasing modern technology machine to use less water.
