Chemical & environmentally Sustainable Bangladesh Knitwear industry: BKMEA Initiative
It is estimated that adopting sustainable business practices to manufacture goods in conformity with the natural environment will surely pave the way to the future of Bangladeshapparel industry in the 21st century. The entrepreneurs should, therefore, think of eco-friendly factories in their business planning and applications and BKMEA is asserting more emphasis on these issues to be exerted in appropriate manner.
Bangladesh has gone long forward in becoming a leader in social and economic arena, but in regards to environmental and chemical sustainability for a sound industrial atmosphere, weshould focus on thriving towards center of excellence.Social compliance has already been established as industrial norms, but environmental and chemical sustainability is going to be a core component of sustainable process in industrial management in the days to come in Bangladesh. So, BKMEA is now advocating aChemical & environmentally sustainable Bangladesh Knitwear industry. Moreover, implementing a sustainable program under safety mechanism is a cost-effective decision for a company.BKMEA understands the practicality of the issues and has pressed member factories home to ensure such sustainable safety mechanism across their factory levels for a secure industry belt.
The environmental sustainability is focused on social responsibility and being good stewards of the products the factories produce and the services they provide. “If you’re doing safety effectively in a business world, it’s going to relate to fewer schedule interruptions, which will minimize your costs,” says Mark Steinhofer, facilities lead safety advisor in Safety Management Group’s owner services team. BKMEA believes in the same ethos and has efficiently managed to make the member factories agree to come into the terms with environmental sustainability at their factories. Now BKMEA members are more focused on environmental issues than before!
We also think alternative to save our eco-system for the greater interest of the mankind. At this juncture, eco-friendly factory or green factory can be a mainstream solution by which we could reduce co2 emission in energy production and enhance green efficiency of products.
It is no denying the fact that Environmental sustainability forces businesses to look beyond making short term gains and at the long term impact they are having on the natural world. Therefore, it becomes necessary to consider not only the immediate impact that isimposed on the environment, but the long term implications as well. For example, when manufacturing a product, a factory needs to look at the environmental impact of the products’ entire lifecycle– from development to disposal before finalizing the designs. It becomes evident that those who fail to comply with the environment issue cannot sustain in business. Realizing this fact the new factory entrepreneurs are very much onto eco-friendly production, which clearly depicts the inner working and the continuous effectiveness of the environmental awareness.
BKMEA believes in educating the existing factory manpower about the sustainability of environment and chemical management. BKMEA has taken many timely initiatives not only to educate them, but alsoto makesure that the activitiesare properly maintained. Numerous publications on the issues of environment and chemical sustainability and safety management have been published regularly to update its member factories. Nosustainable development lingers last without training-based education along with the practical demonstration that assists the factories to have better understanding ofenvironmental and chemical safety issues.BKMEA disseminatesenvironmental knowledge from workers level to top level management in accordance to their role and responsibilities.
BKMEA has started providing consultancy servicesto its member factories on chemical management system, ETP and cleaner production management (CPM). After all, it is our responsibility to understand these interactions and make decisions as a society to protect the environment and also sustain human progress.
Interactions between Industry, Society, and the Environment
| Environmental considerations in the manufacturing life cycle : |
To pace with the demand of today’s reality in apparel sector, BKMEAhas been in effort tointroduce Chemical safety management specially Zero Discharge of Hazardous Chemical (ZDHC), Globally Harmonize System (GHS), Restricted Substance List (RSL) into the factories and reduce carbon emission with a view to promote environment-friendly green concepts among entrepreneurs. We also motivate them to adopt energy-efficient technologies and resource-efficient production technologies. Our mission is to make the Bangladesh Knitwear industry a chemically and environmentally sustainable sector through the passage of time, which must be green, sound, eco-friendly at the same time!