“Textile giant Bangladesh pushed to recycle more waste”, 23 April 2025

..Bangladesh, the world's second-largest apparel producer, only recycles a small percentage of its textile waste, with the rest shipped abroad or left to pollute the landscape. As more countries introduce rules requiring greater recycled content in clothes, analysts and business owners say Bangladesh must expand recycling to meet demand from a global textile recycling market projected to be worth $9.4 billion by 2027. The European Union this month published its first road map towards meeting the standards under its Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation, which includes provisions for reducing the environmental harm caused by the textile industry. This will require Bangladesh and other fashion suppliers to boost recycling while improving working conditions in what is largely an informal sector, said Patrick Schröder, a senior research fellow at the British think tank Chatham House.

…

Bangladesh's fashion industry is estimated to produce up to 577,000 metric tons of textile waste from the factories each year. Most of it is shipped abroad, and the rest is left to clog bodies of water, pollute the soil, enter landfills or be incinerated, which produces toxic gases.. ..Thousands of informal workshops sort and bundle the waste, known as jhut, and what remains in Bangladesh is down-cycled to make low-value products like mattresses, pillows and cushion. The scraps go to hundreds of mostly unregistered workshops near the capital Dhaka, where they are cleaned and sorted into batches based on quality, colour and other considerations. Tens of thousands of workers, 70% of them women, sort the remnants for 10 to 12 hours a day, a study by UNICEF .. Workers said they toil for low wages without key safety measures, like drinking water, paid sick leave or protection from harassment.