Recycling and reusing jhoot, the local word for left-over scraps of fabric from the manufacturing of ready-made garments, will add significant value to the raw material, creating jobs and augmenting export earnings.
“There is a huge opportunity for Bangladesh to create new jobs, and indeed a new market, by establishing new factories to recycle RMG by-products,” Khatib Abdul Zahid Mukul, managing director of Givensee Group of Industries Ltd, said.
“We can make quality carpets and rugs, if the latest machines to recycle jhoot are introduced to the industry,” Zahid said.
“We have to import cotton at Tk80 per pound, which is made of waste cloth. Value addition can bring more earnings to the sector and create more jobs,” he said.
Importers of cotton said they spend Tk80 per pound of cotton, which they say is made from jhoot worth Tk10.
The country already exports RMG by-products to countries that are recycling the materials into cotton, yarn and other products.
According to the Export Promotion Bureau (EPB), Bangladesh exported RMG by-products worth $30.85 million in the last fiscal year.
The country earned $8.33 billion in the first quarter of the current fiscal year.
Bangladesh exports RMG by-products to India, China, Vietnam, Indonesia, USA and European Union (EU) countries.
According to exporters, white jhoot is exported to India and China at Tk60,000 per tonne, while mixed-colour jhoot sells for Tk40,000 per tonne.
But the country has just eight big factories spinning cotton yarn from RMG waste-products.
“We basically use RMG waste to make yarn, which local manufacturers use to make terry-cloth towels, carpets and blankets, said Anwarul Alam Chowdhury Parvez, owner of Altex Polycot.
Sector leaders urged the government to ban the export of RMG by-products and to take steps offer financial support to set up recycling factories.
Although currently unable to make use of the by-products of its main export industry, the country could do so if the government helps, they said.
“Due to a lack of proper government initiative and financial support, we are not able to do this business. The country is being deprived of thousands of crores in earnings because the raw materials are being exported,” Md Babul Bepary, director of Mirpur Kata Kapor Babosayee Samity, told the Dhaka Tribune.
He said if the by-products were recycled, earnings would double.
According to the Bangladesh Garment and Textile Waste Exporters Association (BGTEA), the market size of RMG by-products is over Tk2,000 crore.
According to Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA) sources, there are some 4,500 active RMG units producing over 351,000 tonnes of by-products.
An industry source said a typical factory produces around 250 kg of waste fabric per day. There is no formal data available about garment manufacturing by-products given by authorities in Bangladesh.
The simple scraps of fabric that are a by-product of making ready-made garments are generating new jobs, especially for women in the informal sector.
Some 150,000 people are currently employed in the informal, small-scale operations of the potentially lucrative sector.
The business of reusing wasted cloth is a three-step process. First a person, usually a locally influential person, collects the cloth forcibly or via negotiations, then it is sold to the reuse or recycling business and then the final product is sold to different consumers and exported.
After collection, the process of recycling starts with sorting, which is done by the colour, type and size of fabric.
Larger scraps of cloth are used to make children’s frocks, skirts, shirts, pajamas and sometimes pillow covers.
“The price of waste cloth depends on quality and size, starting from Tk10 and going up to Tk300 per kilogramme of jhoot, said Alimuzzaman Farazi, a trader at Mirpur Jhootpatti.
Large scraps of fabric are sold to local traders to make garments for children. Most of these children’s clothes are sold in Bangladesh but some are exported to India, he added.
“We have to pay a lot, as we cannot buy the by-product fabric directly from factory owners,” said a trader at Mirpur. “If we could buy jhoot directly from the factory then it would be better for us,” he said.
Dhaka’s bedding industry is dependent on jhoot. Mattresses, pillows, cushions, seat stuffing and padding in cars, public buses and rickshaws use recycled cloth and processed cotton.
Factory owners and traders said giving formal shape to the informal sector would reduce criminality in the jhoot trade, reduce operational risks and draw in much needed investment.
The country cannot properly absorb the supply of RMG by-products because there is no full-fledged recycling industry, industry sources said.
That is why the lion’s share of jhoot gets exported to India and China.
Meanwhile, the country’s Tk2,000 crore jhoot business is controlled by politically-backed local leaders and gangsters, which has led to unrest and even murder over the control of the business.
A factory owner in Narayanganj, on condition of anonymity, told the Dhaka Tribune that the jhoot and stock-lot business is in the control of local politicians and their strongmen.
Factory owners alleged that influential local political leaders foment labour unrest as a pretext to contact factory owners and then try to wrest control of the business under the pretence of subduing the workers.
