Garment Water ​Footprints

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Garment Water ​Footprints

This is a story about the invisible price we pay every time a jeans rolls out of a factory in Bangladesh. A western buyer knows little about how much water, that precious resource, was used to wash and dye his trousers.

Inam Ahmed and Refayet Ullah Mirdha

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Image source: The Daily Star

Thirty-nine years ago, Bangladesh tentatively stepped into the global apparel scene with a small consignment of 13 million Francs to a Paris-based firm in 1978.

Today it exports $28.14 billion worth of the item or 6.4 percent of the global apparel pie. The country's trade critically depends on this commodity that represents 82 percent of Bangladesh's exports.

The export target by 2021 has been set at $50 billion. With the decline of China in the apparel world, especially in the cheap and medium categories, the target looks achievable.

OVERUSE OF GROUNDWATER

But the success comes at a huge environmental cost. We don't even know about it.

Every year, 1,500 billion litres of water is used to dye and wash the cotton and clothes for the garment industry, according to a study of the International Finance Corporation (IFC). This is enough to fill up 600,000 Olympic swimming pools.

Or you may think it this way. This same water can meet the demand of 8 lakh people for a whole year.

For the average jeans you wear that weighs 1kg, it takes 250 litres of water to wash.

And all this has to be sweet water, a precious commodity, pumped out from underground.

The Water Supply and Sewerage Authority charges a piffling Tk 0.0326 for a litre of water. Even at this rate, the current market price of 1,500 billion litres of groundwater is $611 million.

OUTCOME

Two things happen when such a huge quantity of water is pumped out. First, we create a hollow underground. As the hollow grows, it creates chances for the earth to cave in.

And secondly, as more and more water is pumped out, the water table goes down.

We can find this actually happening in Dhaka where every year the water level is dropping by 2.5 percent. This means we have to dig deeper and deeper to pump the same water out.

The water table is not infinite. One day, it will go dry if not recharged. We will not have any more water to pump out. A real disaster will take place.

 

Read full article: The Daily Star

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