Prime Minister’s Special Envoy on Environment and Climate Change Saber Hossain Chowdhury on Thursday said they need to make the shift from linear to circular economy to keep resources in use for as long as possible, and extract and harvest the maximum value from the products whilst in use.
‘’In traditional economy which is linear, we produce, consume and throw away is not sustainable,” said Saber, also Chairman of Parliamentary Standing Committee on Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MOEFCC) while speaking at the 1st Bangladesh Circular Economy Summit.
For that, he said, the business case for circularity has to be win-win for manufacturers and buyers.
Circularity will be the key for the next growth transition of Bangladesh’s economy, speakers said in the Summit.
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The Bangladesh Circular Economy Summit was organised by Bangladesh Apparel Exchange in collaboration with Laudes Foundation and in partnership with P4G.
The summit was powered by GIZ, Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Bangladesh and H&M Group.
Mayor, Dhaka North City Corporation Md. Atiqul Islam, Ambassador of the Kingdom of the Netherlands to Bangladesh Anne Van Leeuwen, Country Director, Bangladesh Resident Mission, Asian Development Bank Edimon Ginting, Deputy Head of Delegation, Delegation of the European Union to Bangladesh Dr Bernd Spanier; Head of Sustainability, H&M Group Leyla Ertur and founder and CEO of Bangladesh Apparel Exchange Mostafiz Uddin, among others, spoke at the opening plenary of the summit.
Atiqul Islam said ‘‘3R – reduce, recycle and reuse are the keys for sustainability. Moreover, extended product or producer responsibility as stipulated by the EU is going to be mandatory for apparel producers in Bangladesh. So, the importance of promoting circular fashion in the country cannot be overstated.’’
Ambassador Anne Van Leeuwen said the Netherlands and Bangladesh have many things in common and one of them is that both countries are big deltas, thus vulnerable to climate change.
“Bangladesh has made tremendous progress in economy and social development indexes. The country has the opportunity to be a leader in the circular economy too,” said the Ambassador.
Leyla Ertur said the fashion industry needs to accelerate its transformation towards circularity as the way forward to solve the biggest challenges we face, not only companies but societies in general, such as climate change and biodiversity loss.
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“We need to join forces to build a circular fashion ecosystem and Bangladesh is unique as the country with the world’s largest share of pre-consumer textile waste readily available for recycling. Bangladesh has a great potential to attract investments from local and foreign investors to scale up the production of high-value recycled fibers from pre-consumer waste. However, we are well-aware the industry needs advancing policy to regulate the waste handling sector in order to move forward in this area.’’
Founder and CEO of Bangladesh Apparel Exchange Mostafiz Uddin said Bangladesh Circular Economy Summit aims to find out the opportunities for the shift from the linear to circular business model and foster collaborations among the stakeholders to promote a circular economy in the country.
The summit consisted of four plenary sessions, three keynotes, three presentations, a roundtable and a fireside chat.