Waste Water Production in Fabric Processing in Bangladesh

Abstract

Textile industry is one of the fastest growing industries and significantly contributes to the economic growth in different developing countries like Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Srilanka, Vietnam etc. At the same time, this industry has high water consumption (one of the most water consuming industries) and subsequently produces a large amount of waste water containing high load of contaminants. Such waste water may be environmentally hazardous because of many toxic substances including lead, mercury, and arsenic, etc. This paper reviews the current scenario of water consumption by the textile industries in Bangladesh. It has also identified the quantity of consumed water in different textile processing and the amount of textile waste effluent, characteristics of this effluent and its effect on the environment are reviewed in details. In this study, some of the data have been collected from the online journals and experimental data has been collected from a textile dyeing manufacturing industry (Interstoff Apparels Ltd., 1703-Gazipur, Bangladesh). Besides, total consumption of water on different activities and fabric processing have been shown and analyzed. The result of this study gives a clear idea that different internal activities are also responsible for a huge amount of water consumption in a textile industry. At the end, some recommendations have been suggested which can be applied in the reduction of water usage in textile footprint.