Bangladeshi textile companies have started adopting water saving technologies to reduce additional water expenditure. Until now Bangladesh textile industry is one of the highest water consuming countries for washing and dyeing fabrics and the sector consume 1,500 billion litres of ground water a year for washing and dyeing fabrics. A report, ‘Bangladesh-The Netherlands: 50 years of water cooperation’, published recently by Partners for Water Programme of the Netherlands in cooperation with the Bangladesh government revealed this issue. The report mentioned that the Dutch government is going to extend an innovation fund for the textile factories of Bangladesh in helping adopting innovative technologies which further contribute in improving water performances of the factories. The fund is expected to be managed by ‘Textile Technology Business Center’ located in BGMEA (Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers nd Exporters Association). “The Innovation Fund will provide seed capital to support pilots and field-testing of innovations in the Bangladeshi context. The Innovation Fund aims to stimulate local wet processing factories to start piloting cleaner production technologies – with a focus on water sustainability – that are new or uncommon for Bangladesh.”, the report said. The report highlighted that which millers adopted the water saving technologies they have been able to save more than 50 to 70 percent of water. Fakir Apparels, a garment maker company based in Narayanganj previously used 24.96 crore litres of water for washing and dyeing 1,200 tonnes of fabrics in a month, but the amount of water has now declined to 6.96 crore litres. The factory is also saving electricity by adopting similar kind of technologies. Mondol Fabrics, a concern of Mondol Group, also adopted the water saving technologies in recent times. The factory has already implemented the first phase of adopting the technologies under the Partnership Agreement on Cleaner Textile (PaCT) project and the second phase is going on. After the implementation of the first phase which took 14 months, the factory has been able to save 27 percent of water in washing and dyeing fabrics. Before adopting the water saving technologies, the company used more than 120 litres of water for washing a kilogram of fabrics, but now the quantity declined between 80 litres and 85 litres, according to a report published by a mainstream newspaper from Dhaka. The company washes and dyes 500 tonnes of fabrics a month. Once the second phase is implemented, water consumption will fall further. The PaCT of IFC supports textile wet processing factories in adopting cleaner production. PaCT has provided advisory services to around 200 textile factories (washing, dyeing and finishing units) on resource efficiency measures. The partnership is based on both brand and factory contributions.
