Image source: The Independent
This week's compelling interview is with manufacturer Shafiq Hassan, of the Echotex manufacturing facility in Gazipur, Bangladesh.
Last year Bangladesh was ranked the third-largest exporter of clothing globally (after China and the European Union), exporting USD $38.4 billion worth of garments. The nation is home to over 40K garment factories of various sizes, and over 4 million garment workers.
A decade after Rana Plaza, much progress has been made, including around environmental sustainability. Bangladesh now has 186 LEED-certified factories, and, according to Reuters, lays claim to 9 of world's top 10 'green' garment factories (considering carbon, water and energy footprint, waste, logistics, and using more sustainable materials).
Clare interviewed Shafiq in London, in September 2024, a little over month after peaceful students protests in Bangladesh toppled ex-Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, then presiding over an increasingly corrupt and authoritarian regime.
So what's next?
The Nobel peace laureate and economist Muhammad Yunus (founder of the Grameen bank) is leading the interim/ caretaker government. The factories are back working. Leading facilities like Echotex continue to innovate. What's unfolding is very relevant to the fashion sector, and to all of us who care about ethical production and want to understand the role brands have to play when it comes to, what we hope are, long-term partnerships with suppliers.
““Bangladesh has come out of a lot of difficulty in the past. Bangladesh is a place of hope, is a place of resilience ... We could again come together as a nation, with the ertailers and the brands supporting us, and make the transformation. It’s a huge, huge opportunity.””
NOTES & LINKS
SHAFIQ HASSAN is co-founder, with Para Hamilton, of Echo Sourcing, Echotex and Ninety Percent (see below). Echo Sourcing a design-to-delivery garment supplier working with major fashion retailers across Europe since 1996. Based in our UK, Bangladesh and Turkey offices. See here.
Echotex is a large garment factory facility in Gazipur, Bangladesh, producing up to 3 million garments a month for global retail chains. It was the first factory in Bangladesh to offer health insurance to all workers and their families. It provides childcare, as well as breakfast, lunch and dinner on site. The factory is a Bluesign Approved System Partner in sustainable textiles, it’s platinum LEED-certified and platinum on the Higg Index for sustainable apparel. From early on WATER USE was a prioroty. Echotex harvests rainwater on the roof of its buildings to use directly in wet processing, reducing dependency on groundwater reserves. They’re currently in the process of setting up a new ZERO LIQUID DISCHARGE (ZLD) facility. The goal of ZLD water treatment is to reduce wastewater to potable water that is fit for normal use (using s combination of ultrafiltration, reverse osmosis, evaporation and fractional electro deionization). More here.
Shafiq Hassan
NINETY PERCENT is a sustainable womenswear label where 90% of profits from sales go to good causes. They say: “We were inspired to break the exploitative model that currently exists within the fashion industry and create a new way of thinking, sourcing and sharing profits. In normal businesses, profit is normally taken by shareholders in terms of dividends or distributed profit. At Ninety Percent, the shareholders take 10% of profits and donate the rest – 80% to the four charities we support, and 10% to the people who make our clothes.
We share our profits are shared between four causes – Children’s Hope, Big Life Foundation, WildAid and War Child UK – and the people who make our collection happen. Therefore, the more we sell, the more we can give back.” www.ninetypercent.com
Ninety Percent
REGENERATIVE FASHION Regenerative Fashion and A Just Transition is a new report by Safia Minney produced with Middlesex University and funded by ACCESS (Advancing Capacity for Climate and Environment Social Science). It presents alternative approaches from the perspective of key suppliers in Bangladesh and India that serve the UK market, and sets out to challenge the unsustainability of the current UK fashion and textile sector.
“The Just Transition refers to the process of shifting to a more sustainable and equitable economy in a way that supports workers and communities who are directly or indirectly affected by the transition…”
Access the report and watch the doco here.
FURTHER LISTENING Here’s Episode 174 with Edward Herzman from Sourcing Journal.
Here’s the one about 10 Years Since Rana Plaza.
LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. Originating in the US, it’s an international green building certification system recognised as a benchmark for industry excellence in sustainability. Discover here.
R.A.G.S. was set up in 2010 to support interventions that aimed at improving working conditions of women and other vulnerable workers in the Ready-Made Garment (RMG) industry in countries supplying the UK market. The goal of RAGS was to encourage and contribute to responsible, ethical production being the norm in the ready-made garments sector supplying the UK by supporting voluntary approaches to ethical garment production and helping the garment industry to go beyond the first tier of supply chains and push more responsible labour practices further out into production networks. It supported both the private sector and civil society to strengthen market drivers for ethical trade, and sought to support collaboration and learning between them. Until 2013, this initiative was funded by UK aid from the Department for International Development (DFID). More here.
RAGS identified three key problem areas to be addressed:
Production Managers not being persuaded of the business case for better work and management
Low awareness of decent work and labour rights
Institutional barriers to scaling up ethical practices.
BRAC is an international development organisation founded in Bangladesh in 1972 that partners with over 100 million people living with inequality and poverty.
Image source: Al Jazeera
REGIME CHANGE in Bangladesh was ushered in by mass student protests during the summer of 2024. Read Al Jazeera’s coverage here.
Outgoing PM Sheikh Hasina’s government responded to the protests with appalling violence. At the time of publishing this podcast, a new report by the current interim government, titled Unfolding the Truth, implicates Hasina in as many as 3,500 cases of forced disappearances during her time in office. She is wanted by Bangladesh's International Criminal Tribunal (ICT) for her alleged involvements in "crimes against humanity" that took place during the demonstrations, in which hundreds were killed. Read more.
Here’s where you can watch Al Jazeera’s The Minister’s Milllions doco. #ministersmillions
HOW WERE FACTORIES AFFECTED? With the garment industry accounting for around 90% of the country's exports, factory owners were keen to swiftly resume full operations after production was disrupted. Warned the Solidarity Centre: "The economy of Bangladesh, depends on garment factories, but producers say customers are concerned about violence and disruption …The recent disruptions, including a government internet shutdown, closed factories, but some garment workers were back to work August 7. “We only wish our garment sector to thrive,” another worker said. “Our hope is all the factories remain open.” More here.
Things calmed down, although in early September there were more protests this time over wages outside 130 garment factories in key industrial areas such as Gazipur and Narayanganj, reported BenarNews to be the first significant labour action in the country’s garment sector since the new interim government took office the previous month.
AFTER THE REVOLUTION, BANGLADESH IS STABLE. FOR THE MOMENT. “Revolutions often end badly. Bangladesh’s autocratic leader, Sheikh Hasina, was overthrown by student-led protests in August. Muhammad Yunus (above), a microfinance pioneer and Nobel peace laureate who now leads a caretaker government, has restored order. The police are mostly back in their posts, having abandoned them when Sheikh Hasina, who had ordered them to shoot and kill protesters, fled to India. The economy is no longer in free-fall. Remittances, worth 5% of GDP, have stabilised. Yet huge challenges loom. How Bangladesh deals with them will affect not only the lives of its 173m people, but also its neighbours and the rivalry between India, China and the West." READ THE REST AT THE ECONOMIST
ABOUT MUHAMMAD YUNIS “Banker to the Poor” - Professor Muhammad Yunus established the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh in 1983, fueled by the belief that credit is a fundamental human right. His objective was to help poor people escape from poverty by providing loans on terms suitable to them and by teaching them a few sound financial principles so they could help themselves.
From Dr. Yunus’ personal loan of small amounts of money to destitute basketweavers in Bangladesh in the mid-70s, the Grameen Bank has advanced to the forefront of a burgeoning world movement toward eradicating poverty through microlending. Replicas of the Grameen Bank model operate in more than 100 countries worldwide. He won the 2006 NOBEL PEACE PRIZE. More here.
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