DHAKA – A major water and energy-saving initiative in Bangladesh’s garment production sector has attracted support from Puma, VF Corp, Levi’s, Gap and Tesco in its first year. Jeanologia and Omera Solar have also joined the IFC-led programme as technology providers.
PaCT II – the second edition of the pioneering Partnership for Clean Textile – has now concluded its first year. The multi-stakeholder partnership aims to drive sustainability in Bangladesh’s textile sector and works with more than 200 factories to adopt state-of-the-art efficiency and cleaner production practices to reduce water, energy, and chemical use across the textile value chain.
Started in January 2018, with support from the governments of Denmark, Australia, and The Netherlands, PaCT II seeks to save 10.9 billion litres of water and 1.3 million megawatt hours of energy every year. In the process, there will be 241,160 tonnes of green-house gases and 10,000 tonnes of chemical use avoided every year.
The first edition of PaCT, which ran from 2013 to 2017, helped save 21.6 billion litres of water every year, which is the average annual water use for 840,000 people in Bangladesh.
Rana Karadsheh, IFC dirctor of businesses, Agribusiness & Services for Asia, said: “In Bangladesh, the textile manufacturing sector remains a strategic area of focus for IFC. Our advisory program, PaCT, has made a significant impact on changing the landscape of the sector through greater awareness of resource efficiency, and better adoption of efficient technologies and manufacturing processes. We are working towards creating markets for greener investments.”
Bangladesh is the second largest apparel exporter in the world, next only to China, according to the World Trade Organization.
“The BGMEA is happy to be a partner of IFC. We are proud to say that Bangladesh not only has the most transparent garment industry, it is also one of the most sustainable garment industries in the world,” said Miran Ali, director of BGMEA and the managing director of Bitopi Group.