ON A winter morning in Dhaka, the air can feel like a fogged pane of glass — hazy, weighty, almost routine in its discomfort. We have grown used to reading the sky as an index of our economic life. The same city that struggles to breathe is also the command centre of a production-driven economy built on manufacturing, processing and export. In that tension lies the question that resource-efficient and cleaner production places before us: can Bangladesh continue to grow while using less energy, less water and fewer raw materials, and while generating less waste? The question is neither utopian nor abstract. It is already being answered in fragments across industry. The difficulty is no longer proof of concept. It is scale.
Pollution in Bangladesh is too often framed as a lament, as if it were a tragic but inevitable accompaniment to development. Yet the numbers tell a harder story. The World Bank has warned that timely action on air pollution, improvements in water and sanitation, and the reduction of lead exposure could prevent more than 133,000 premature deaths each year in Bangladesh. That estimate forces a reframing. Cleaner production is not merely an environmental preference. It is a public-health intervention conducted through industrial equipment — boilers tuned properly, pumps calibrated efficiently, chemicals managed carefully, effluent treated consistently. It is about fewer hospital admissions, steadier work attendance, higher productivity and a labour force not chronically worn down by the by-products of its own output. In that sense, resource-efficient and cleaner production is economic pragmatism, not moral embellishment.
The garment and textile supply chain — the backbone of Bangladesh’s export earnings — has become a proving ground for this pragmatism. International buyers now scrutinise environmental performance with a seriousness that was rare a decade ago. At the same time, factory owners face rising energy and water costs, making efficiency a financial imperative rather than a reputational one. The International Finance Corporation-led Partnership for Cleaner Textile (PaCT) programme, active since 2013, has worked with hundreds of factories to implement both low-cost operational improvements and larger capital investments. The results reported under PaCT II suggest that since 2018, 229 factories have reduced emissions by roughly 222,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide annually, alongside measurable reductions in water, energy and chemical consumption. These are not symbolic gestures. They translate directly into lower utility bills, improved compliance and stronger bargaining positions in global markets.
Green building certification has, in turn, made these technical shifts legible to boards and buyers. Under the US Green Building Council’s LEED framework, Bangladesh’s RMG sector has amassed an unprecedented number of certified green factories, including dozens added in 2025 alone — reportedly more than any other country achieved in a single year. Certification is not a panacea; plaques on walls do not clean rivers. But the discipline required — systematic energy metering, water recycling, ventilation optimisation, chemical management — aligns precisely with resource-efficient and cleaner production principles. For many owners, LEED becomes the entry point into a broader culture of resource accounting. The certificate is visible; the underlying shift in managerial habit is less so, but arguably more important.
If garments demonstrate the gains of aligning competitiveness with environmental discipline, leather illustrates the costs of failing to do so. The relocation of tanneries from Hazaribagh to Savar was presented as a watershed moment, centred on the installation of a common effluent treatment plant. Yet reporting by New Age in late 2025 cited a draft government evaluation indicating inefficient common effluent treatment plant operations and continued high pollutant loads in discharged waste. Exporters reportedly faced price reductions of 50 to 60 per cent from cautious international buyers. In this context, cleaner production ceases to be a matter of public relations. It becomes a condition of market access. When environmental infrastructure underperforms, the penalty is paid not only in ecological degradation but also in diminished export earnings and reputational harm.
The brick sector presents a similar lesson, though at a different scale and level of formality. Scattered across peri-urban and rural landscapes, Bangladesh’s roughly 7,000 brick kilns contribute significantly to particulate pollution, black carbon and carbon dioxide emissions. Research associated with Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) has documented how modest changes in kiln design, management and insulation — encapsulated in ‘Zigzag 2.0’ interventions — can improve fuel efficiency and reduce emissions. In trials, a majority of participating kilns adopted core measures, suggesting that even in informal sectors, better practice can diffuse when costs are manageable and benefits visible. Cleaner production here does not require technological revolution. It demands incremental discipline and the right incentives.
Ship recycling, long emblematic of Bangladesh’s industrial resilience, is now being reshaped by international regulatory commitments. After ratifying the International Maritime Organization’s Hong Kong International Convention in 2023, Bangladesh committed to bringing its yards into compliance by mid-2025. As deadlines approached, a growing number of yards sought and secured ‘green’ certification from international classification societies. In practical terms, this means more systematic handling of oils, asbestos and hazardous waste streams, alongside safer worker conditions. The recovery of steel remains central, but the management of contaminants is no longer peripheral. Resource-efficient and cleaner production in this sector is about embedding environmental control into a process already defined by material recovery.
Yet sectoral exemplars alone will not transform the wider industrial landscape. Bangladesh’s economy is knitted together by thousands of small and medium enterprises, many operating with thin margins and limited technical capacity. For resource-efficient and cleaner production to become common sense rather than exceptional achievement, finance and skills must extend beyond flagship factories. Bangladesh Bank administers refinance schemes covering renewable energy, green products and brick-kiln efficiency, aiming to reduce the cost of capital for cleaner investments. Meanwhile, the Palli Karma-Sahayak Foundation, through its World Bank–financed SMART project launched in 2023, intends to support tens of thousands of microenterprises with assessments and capacity-building that include resource efficiency. The ambition is clear. The test lies in implementation: whether application procedures are accessible, technical advice practical and monitoring credible.
A circular logic is gradually emerging across sectors. In mid-2025, experts speaking through the United Nations Industrial Development Organization urged Bangladesh to consider mandatory plastic recycling targets, aligning domestic policy with the anticipated global plastics treaty expected in 2026. The premise is straightforward: if a fixed proportion of packaging must come from recycled content, waste becomes feedstock rather than liability. Similar reasoning applies in construction-linked metal workshops, where regional policy work under the Switch-Asia Programme has demonstrated that scrap recovery, heat-loss reduction and improved housekeeping can translate directly into financial gains. In food processing, reductions in material loss and wastewater volumes likewise protect margins. Across these disparate activities, Resource-efficient and cleaner production is less a discrete intervention than a way of seeing — waste as inefficiency, inefficiency as cost.
What, then, remains missing? Not awareness. Bangladesh’s policy documents are replete with references to sustainability, resilience and green growth. Rather, what is lacking is alignment. Compliance must be predictably enforced so that evasion is not cheaper than adherence. Financial institutions must standardise green lending criteria so that environmental upgrades are not treated as exotic risks. Industry associations must internalise resource efficiency as central to competitiveness, not as a concession to foreign buyers. Early movers must feel rewarded through market recognition, regulatory clarity and access to finance. Otherwise, islands of excellence risk becoming isolated showcases rather than catalysts.
Bangladesh has demonstrated, repeatedly, its capacity to leap when incentives converge — in garments, in digital finance, in export diversification. The same principle can apply to cleaner production. When saving water, energy and materials becomes the default managerial reflex rather than an externally imposed demand, growth need not arrive accompanied by a cough. The task before us is to make resource efficiency so embedded in industrial practice that it ceases to be described as ‘green’ at all. It becomes, simply, common sense.
Dr Makhan Lal Dutta is an irrigation engineer and serves as chairman and CEO of Harvesting Knowledge Consultancy.
