But the success comes at a huge environmental cost. We don’t even know about it.



Every year 1,500 billion litres of water is used to dye and wash the cotton and clothes for the garment industry, according to a study of the International Finance Corporation. This is enough to fill up 600,000 Olympic swimming pools.



Or you may think it this way. This same water can meet the demand of 8 lakh people for a whole year.

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For the average jeans you wear that weighs 1kg, it takes 250 litres of water to wash. And all this has to be sweet water, a precious commodity, pumped out from underground.

250-litre water used for washing

1kg jeans 100,000m3 water used in 1 month by over 789 dyeing and finishing factories

The Water Supply and Sewerage Authority charges a piffling Tk 0.0326 for a litre of water. Even at this rate, the current market price of 1500 billion litres of groundwater is $ 611 million.