The Census of Mapped in Bangladesh (MiB) project sometimes takes us to remote places and reveals interesting stories. This story unfolded in a remote village in northern Bangladesh, hundreds of kilometers away from centers of export oriented RMG industry, in a place called Kochashohor in Gaibandha district.

Mizanur Rahman runs a shop in the busy market in Kochashohor Noyarhat Bazar selling sweaters with complex patterns. His factory is right behind his shop where eight Jacquard machines run twenty four hours to churn up these sweaters that fetch one of the best prices in that market.

There are two things that are strange about this setting. Firstly – Noyarhat Bazar is located almost off the grid, smack in the middle of wet rice cultivation low farm land, and secondly – the availability of high end operators and maintenance crew that is needed to run these Jacquard machines.

The secret that is fuelling such anomaly is the circular economy practice.

While circular economy is a goal for advanced economies, Bangladesh with its rich culture of recycling, is making it a reality. The yarn used in every single product of the Noyarhat market comes from the yarn made from recycling the waste sweaters and wasted yarn from the export oriented sweater industry.

The Jacquard machines that are being used there are also respawned ones with their parts scavenged from multiple predecessors. Few entrepreneurs like Mr. Rahman, have bought broken ones and through trial and error made them functional again. But where are they getting the expertise to do computer aided design from the stock of local rice farmers?

The answer is reverse migration. The boys are responding to the call to return home with glee when they find out that they can get the same wage back home while enjoying the love and warmth of their home.

Even though you find jacquard shops here, the ecosystem is all about manual machines. Almost every household has a set of manual machines supplementing their income from the fields. The homestead gets their payment for the pieces they produce. The yarn is provided by the mohajon or the store owners.

And this yarn is where the most remarkable circularity is taking place. The yarns mostly come from the yarn market in Dupchanchia in the neighbouring district of Bogura or Shantahar districts.

The yarn manufacturers collect their raw materials from the sweater “jhoot” market of Dhaka, Gazipur and Narayanganj. Jhoot is the local term for all the waste materials that comes out of the RMG industry. These jhoot is separated and graded by the jhoot merchants for different recycling industries.

Once these jhoot sweaters reach the yarn “manufacturers”, they are manually unwinded from the garment and then processed and re-coned for their reuse to start again. This unwinding process is almost always done by local ladies whose lives were previously restricted to only household work.

The part of yarn or the garment that cannot be re-coned are collected by the “cotton” manufacturer. They crush the garment to produce raw material for the comforter industry.

The sweaters, socks and scarfs that are made in Noyarhat Bazar are distributed all around Bangladesh and are the life blood of that community. Even though it is located around 200 km from the Indian border the products are not exported there due to its higher cost relative to what is available in the Indian market.

Like the workers in Mizanur Rahman’s factory who come back home to make a full circle the garments too make a full circle when they are unwinded and transformed back to sweaters. This circularity keeps the community going and also helps the planet to stay clean.

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Syed Hasibuddin Hussain, Project Manager of the Mapped in Bangladesh (MiB) project of Centre for Entrepreneurship Development (CED), BRAC University