With climate change and its effect on the earth coupled with worldwide environment cautious buyer and consumer demand, eco-friendly manufacturing is the need of the time rather than current form of production which consumes lot of natural resources. Eco-friendly apparel is created from the sources that are environmentally friendly and sustainable. Considerations should be given to the products’ total life span (i.e. starting from the design for the environment, obtaining raw materials, producing clothing as well as its impact on the planet). So green aspects in the clothing industry should be evaluated along the product-life cycle. Comparing different products, designers should decide which environmental effects to focus on in an attempt to make the products eco-friendly. This will minimize wastes and hazardous by-products, air pollution, energy cost and many other factors. Organic raw materials for textile are regarded as healthy, natural and are grown without cancer producing pesticide and insecticide including organic cotton, cotton made from hemp, bamboo or soy fibres. So, organic clothing is made based on the raw materials that do not adversely affect health and cause irreversible environmental damage. Eco-friendly or green manufacturing involves activities such as reducing and recycling, whereas remanufacturing involves activities such as reusing and product/material recovery. Reducing is a technique where consumption of scarce materials and/or energy is minimized, whereas recycling refers to the activities performed to recover materials from the product, and reusing is the idea of using intact parts of products used for manufacturing activities. Now let us discuss the potentiality of green financing in RMG sector of Bangladesh. There are also tremendous growth potentials for this sector. However, a major environmental hazard present in textile industries is the discharge of untreated effluent to environment causing pollution of nearby soil and water. Therefore, textile and readymade garments (RMG) are crucial among some specific sectors (sectors like leather industry, brick) of Bangladesh that require intervention in terms of providing green finance with a view to reducing pollutants, saving water bodies and securing ecological balance. Therefore, to be competitive and for long term sustainability, there is no way for the sector to implement or comply with international social and environmental standards. Under the circumstances, entrepreneurs in the textile and RMG sectors are willing to comply with the international and national social and environmental standards, but lack of finance has been identified as the major hindrance to promote the factories in to green and compliance ones. That is why there is a huge opportunity for green finance in RMG sector. Green financing in Bangladesh is still a new concept and because of a knowledge gap at both the consumers as well as the bank’s level coupled with inadequate marketing of the banking, it has not gained sufficient popularity and momentum. In this respect, it needs to be addressed widely in order to achieve significant benefits, particularly for the RMG sector of Bangladesh. Commercial banks, both private and government and industrial or development specialized banks should come forward to provide loans for green industry development in RMG sector and also provide support for green products development in Bangladesh like other financers like ADB , AfD and DFID and other international agencies and development partners. As RMG sector suffers from the inadequate supply of electricity, commercial, private and government banks should provide loans at a lower interest rate for RMG industries to invest in solar or renewable energy plants. The green financing activities should have linkage with the environmental policies and laws of the land as well as international environmental policies and laws. Similarly, the government should take rigorous steps to bring green FDI in the Exclusive Economic zones so that technology transfer is made and to bring FDI in developing the green backward linkage for the RMG Sector including green finance, green and energy efficient technology, ETP, hazardous free chemical etc. Although Bangladesh Bank (BB) developed a Green Banking Policy in 2011 under a Green Banks and CSR Project requiring commercial, private and also government banks to disburse 5 per cent of lending to green banking. But the concept being relatively new, green financing is yet to gain strength in Bangladesh. The Industrial Policy 2010 states that the government will take necessary measures to run ETPs and central effluent treatment plants (CETPs) in the industries properly. Last but not the least, development of eco-friendly RMG industry through green financing is a demand of time from the viewpoint of long term sustainability and competitiveness and image building of the industry globally and to save the mother nature. The failure to do so will certainly entail costs in terms of business, environment and livelihoods of people as well. We certainly do not wish to be blamed and create a deep concern for the future generation.
