Beyond the loom: Building a water-responsible apparel industry
Over the last decade, PaCT has engaged more than 450 factories, catalysing 35 billion litres of freshwater savings and 29 billion litres of wastewater reduction per year, alongside 3.8 million MWh/year energy savings.
The global textile, apparel, and fashion industry has rapidly expanded over the last two decades having a value of around $1.7 trillion and employing over 300 million people worldwide. This growth has generated severe environmental challenges as textile manufacturing is highly resource-intensive, consuming vast amounts of water, chemicals, and energy. In addition to that, extreme pollution by wastewater discharge, and greenhouse gas emissions have also been a critical challenge revolving around this industry. Studies show that if current trends persist, the carbon footprint of the apparel industry could reach one-quarter of global emissions by 2050, making it one of the most pressing sustainability challenges worldwide.
Bangladesh's apparel and textile sector is responsible for more than 80% of national export earnings and has positioned the country as the world's second-largest garment exporter worldwide. Although this has powered the country's economic growth, its heavy water footprint poses unmatched risks to groundwater security, river ecology, and climate resilience.
The International Finance Corporation (IFC) Partnership of Cleaner Textile (PaCT) estimates that the textile wet processing industry in Bangladesh consumes around 1,500 billion litres of water annually to process 5 million tonnes of fabric. This estimate indicates that an average of 300 litres of water is consumed to produce only 1 kg of fabric. This dependence has been fed mainly by private deep-tubewells extracting freshwater from deeper aquifers.
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The industrial cluster around Dhaka, Narayanganj, Savar, and Gazipur depends predominantly on groundwater for washing, dyeing, and finishing, with consequences now visible in rapidly falling aquifer levels and deteriorating surface water quality. In some hotspots, groundwater levels have been reported to decline by 2-3 metres per year, and under business-as-usual growth this rate is expected to exceed 4 metres per year by 2030 unless aggressive demand management and alternative sustainable supplies are ensured.
Another spectrum of apparel industry's water footprint corresponds with the generation and discharge of wastewater. Factory-level studies indicate that producing 1 kg of fabric can generate up to 120 litres of wastewater on average, even the best-practised factories report 50-70 litres/kg wastewater generation, underscoring both progress and the gap to global benchmarks.
Beyond quantities, the quality challenges are also at its peak. Investigative reports and public datasets depict critically low dissolved oxygen (DO) levels indicating extreme pollution in the rivers surrounding Dhaka – the Buriganga, Turag, Shitalakkhya, and Balu – where approximately 80,000m3 of untreated wastewater is estimated to be discharged every day through hundreds of identified discharge points. Studies across Dhaka's rivers (e.g., Buriganga) document effluent with extreme COD/BOD, heavy metals (Cr, Pb, Cd), high TSS/TDS, and dissolved oxygen far below ecological thresholds reflecting untreated or under-treated discharge from dyeing, washing, and other industries. Enforcement has improved, yet chronic exceedances persist at many outfalls, undermining aquatic life and community health along riverbanks. Water bodies closer to Dhaka EPZ area exhibits DO as low as 0.10 to 3.12 mg/l, BOD up to 895 mg/l, alongside pH excursions and elevated Chromium, well beyond the national discharge standards. These reports paint the disastrous scenario, highlighting the urgency of tighter effluent controls and credible treatment performance. The Department of Environment (DoE) updated Environmental Conservation Rules (ECR) in 2023, introducing stricter, textile-specific discharge limits that align with international buyer expectations on effluent quality, forcing many mills to upgrade or re-configure their effluent treatment plants (ETP). According to ECR 2023, wet-processing units are classified as red category industries and must secure an Environmental Clearance Certificate (ECC) from the DoE and demonstrate compliant ETP performance. Although the policies and laws are in favour of protecting the environment, enforcement gaps remain as one of the major challenges.
Over the last decade, PaCT has engaged more than 450 factories, catalysing 35 billion litres of freshwater savings and 29 billion litres of wastewater reduction per year, alongside 3.8 million MWh/year energy savings and 724,000 tCO2e/year reduction. Established with BGMEA, PaCT's Textile Technology and Business Center (TTBC) became a practical knowledge hub for audits, metering, training, and B2B linkages. Industry associations have also stepped up. The BGMEA now collaborates with the World Bank on developing a National Water Reuse Strategy, aiming at a 50% reduction in the sector's blue water footprint by 2030. This is a signal of intent to move beyond incremental savings towards systematic reuse and stewardship. The BGMEA also champions Bangladesh's leadership in LEED-certified "Green" factories, linking energy/resource efficiency with reputational and procurement benefits.
On the knitwear side, the BKMEA has launched a Green Industry Development (GID) cell and a Responsible Business Hub (RBH), offering LEED advisory, rainwater harvesting guidance, ETP setup support, and chemical management training to member factories.
Civil society organisations and NGOs have been voicing their concerns of these unabated and unsustainable extraction of groundwater for a long time and have advocated for better water stewardship in the RMG sector. They have also raised voices for alternatives of using groundwater in the RMG sector and influenced demonstrating alternative sources and technologies. The WaterAid Bangladesh has been a practical catalyst for industrial water reuse through rainwater harvesting (RWH), efficient water usage, and potential alternative sources assessment. Case studies from five RMG/textile factories show that the rainwater harvesting system has the potential of about 144,411m³ of water collectively per year which can be effectively used for toilet flushing, water application for selected processes, and managed aquifer recharge. These systems demonstrate a strong economic viability, with a return on investment (ROI) within 5-10 years, harvested by reduced dependency on groundwater abstraction and purchased water. Additional tangible savings are from lower water treatment costs, particularly in contexts where groundwater requires hardness and iron removal, highlighting rainwater harvesting as both financially and environmentally sustainable solution for the textile sector.
In the Dhaka Export Processing Zone (DEPZ), a WaterAid-supported feasibility assessment identified a rainwater harvesting potential of around 1.7 million m³ per year, with positive financial returns for most large-roof industrial facilities. Harnessing this volume could significantly reduce reliance on Bepza-supplied groundwater, easing pressure on already stressed aquifers, while also lowering stormwater runoff and drainage loads during monsoon flooding. These findings are consistent with wider technical studies on rainwater harvesting in the apparel sector, reinforcing its practicality as an alternate water supply and a scalable pathway toward more resilient and sustainable industrial water management.
Extrapolating the above figures for more than 4,000 registered member factories under the BGMEA and the BKMEA, the national RWS potential can be estimated up to 80 billion litres per year which can provide a financial benefit worth approximately Tk4-5 billion using current practised water tariffs as a proxy.
While accounts for technology upgrades and rainwater harvesting potential are essential – water, sanitation, and hygiene for the workforce are equally critical for sustainable production. WaterAid's pilots in the apparel supply chain of Bangladesh demonstrated clear return on investment (ROI) from improving WASH facilities in workplaces and worker communities. Absenteeism reduced more than 15%, punctuality improved 5%, and attrition dropped 2% – these benefits translate into better working efficiency, lower rework and faults, and stable productivity.
WaterAid is also engaging in the finance and innovation space. At the Sustainable Apparel Forum 2025, the Resilient Water Accelerator (RWA), in collaboration with WaterAid, presented analysis suggesting textile sector water use could grow by up to 300% in coming decades if nothing significant is done, underscoring a financing gap of up to $35 billion for sustainable water management. A pilot project at Fakir Knitwear demonstrates that integrated, multi-stakeholder solutions combining advanced wastewater recovery, energy efficiency, and WASH improvements can significantly reduce freshwater abstraction, wastewater discharge, and GHG emissions while strengthening the business case for circular water use in Bangladesh's garment sector.
Bangladesh faces a two-way water challenge – at one end industrial growth that increases demand for clean water and on the other end legacy pollution that reduces quality and availability of that water. Analysis done with PaCT suggests that under the business-as-usual, the demand for annual water in the textile industry could rise up to 3,400 billion litres by 2030 which is equivalent to the annual water needs of a population of approximately 75 million. Meanwhile, urban growth stresses buckets of basic service provision, unmanaged discharge disrupts river systems, degrades wetland and biodiversity, groundwater drawdown raises extraction costs, salinity risks, and the spectre of supply interruptions for factories and communities.
Yet the flip side of the coin is potential. The combination of reuse, recycling, rainwater harvesting, managed aquifer recharge, surface-water substitution, water pricing reform, and digital data transparency can transform water from a constraint into a competitiveness advantage. Globally, brands are tightening procurement standards, meaning that demonstrating low water usage per kg of garment product, compliant effluent quality, and robust WASH systems will increasingly determine who gets orders, financing, and better margins.
On a positive note, Bangladesh has a solid legal base as the Water Act 2013 makes clear that all water resources are held by the state on behalf of the people and requires permits for large-scale abstraction, prioritising drinking/domestic uses over industry in the times of scarcity.
To elevate Bangladesh's apparel sector sustainably, the Government should take robust initiative for making water reuse as the basic minimum standard in the apparel sector. While the DoE, under the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, should roll out digital discharge sensors and meters, public dashboards per factory/cluster to enforce the ECR 2023, the Water Resource Planning Organization (WARPO) under the Ministry of Water Resources, should proceed with industrial water pricing to incentivise efficiency and reuse which can open shared funding scopes for monitoring infrastructures. Industries should be obliged to adopt PaCT/TTBC monitoring tools to create l/kg benchmarks by sub-process and fabric type, along with using rooftops and paved catchments for non-process needs and where feasible, treat to process-grade for specific usages. BKMEA's GID Cell should coordinate among its members for green factory designs and peer learning. At the same instance, WaterAid Bangladesh and partners should scale up worker-centred WASH interventions including safe water points, improved and gender-responsive sanitation facilities, hygiene behaviour change, and women-led operational models.
This transition definitely needs sustainability-linked credits, loans, blended finance, and in some cases, buyer co-investments for infrastructure and monitoring system development such as ETP upgrades, introducing reuse systems, metering, and WASH. Finally, the industry should build a public trust by co-creating a sustainable water plan incorporating community needs, shared data management system, joint effluent management systems to protect rivers. Government agencies to enforce laws and policies with collaborative efforts from BGMEA/BKMEA through strict action against illegal discharges, overextraction, and recognition of green factory leaders.
A systemic transformation of industrial water management can secure both environmental and economic futures. Scaling water reuse and recycling, rainwater harvesting, managed aquifer recharge, surface-water substitution, digital metering, real-time discharge monitoring, enforcement of policy-regulations, water-pricing reform, and worker-centred WASH investments can reduce water footprint, improve supply security, and boost productivity. High investment needs, limited technical capacity, governance and weak enforcement are some of the major foreseeable barriers. To overcome these barriers, a coordinated actions required from government, industry associations, buyers, financiers, and civil society organisations and if actors align over a shared vision, water can shift from a binding constraint to a competitive advantage, enabling Bangladesh to lead in water-efficient, climate-smart and socially responsible apparel production.
PARTHA HEFAZ SHAIKH IS DIRECTOR, PROGRAMME AND POLICY ADVOCACY of WATERAID Bangladesh; MD TAHMIDUL ISLAM IS DIRECTOR, TECHNICAL SERVICES; and Yeasin Arafat is a technical expert.
