The lungi, a simple wraparound garment worn across South Asia, is offering new insight into the true scale of textile recycling, challenging assumptions that circular fashion remains limited or unscalable. Recent data and field analysis from Bangladesh and India suggest that lungi-linked supply chains are quietly absorbing significant volumes of textile waste, forming a largely invisible but economically critical recycling system.
Worn by an estimated 500 million to 1 billion people globally, the lungi sits at the intersection of affordability, simplicity and industrial efficiency. Produced from a single piece of woven fabric with minimal cutting and processing, it has long been associated with low-cost, high-volume markets. What is becoming clearer, however, is its role as a key end-use product for recycled fibers.
Waste flows at industrial scale
Bangladesh, the world’s second-largest garment exporter, generates around 577,000 tonnes of textile waste annually, according to recent industry estimates. This includes cutting scraps, yarn waste and rejected materials from factories supplying global brands. While only a small share of this waste enters formal recycling systems, a significant portion is captured by informal networks.
These networks, built around the trade of locally known jhut, collect, sort and redistribute waste into secondary production channels. Industry estimates suggest that textile waste recycling already represents a multi-crore dollar domestic economy, with thousands of small traders, sorters and processors involved.
At the same time, Bangladesh exports hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of cotton waste each year, indicating both the scale of available material and the economic value attached to it. Analysts estimate that expanding domestic recycling capacity could save the country up to $700 million annually in reduced raw cotton imports.
Clusters such as Narsingdi and Mymensingh have emerged as hubs where waste is reprocessed into yarn through open-end spinning and other low-cost methods. These yarns are then used to produce fabrics for lungis, towels and other basic textiles, effectively turning industrial waste into mass-consumption goods.
India provides a parallel example at larger scale. The northern city of Panipat processes more than 1 million tonnes of textile waste annually and employs an estimated 300,000 workers in recycling-related activities. India is believed to recycle around 60 percent of its textile waste, significantly higher than Bangladesh, though much of this occurs outside formal systems.
Demand-driven circularity
The lungi’s role in this system is defined by its ability to absorb recycled material at scale. Its production does not require high-grade, uniform fibers, making it compatible with blended and mechanically recycled yarns. Combined with strong demand in price-sensitive markets, this creates a stable outlet for waste-derived inputs.
This demand-driven model contrasts with many circular fashion initiatives that struggle to secure consistent end markets for recycled fibers. In the case of lungis, consumption volumes remain high and predictable, providing a continuous pull for recycled yarn.
The economic structure is self-reinforcing. Garment factories generate waste, informal networks recover and process it, and manufacturers convert it into affordable products that are rapidly sold. This loop operates with minimal external intervention, effectively embedding recycling within the production system itself.
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Invisible in official metrics
Despite its scale, this system remains largely absent from global recycling data. Most industry metrics focus on certified or traceable recycling processes, excluding informal activities that lack documentation or standardization.
This creates a significant measurement gap. While global narratives often emphasize that less than 1 percent of textiles are recycled into new garments, such figures primarily reflect fiber-to-fiber recycling within formal supply chains. They do not capture downcycling and reuse systems that dominate in countries like Bangladesh and India.
As a result, actual recycling activity may be substantially higher than reported, but distributed across informal channels that are difficult to quantify. Researchers estimate that 15 to 20 million people worldwide work in waste collection and recycling, many of them within informal economies.
Environmental impact at scale
Although precise lifecycle assessments for lungis are limited, the environmental implications of their production model are significant. Mechanically recycled cotton can reduce water consumption by 80 to 95 percent compared with virgin cotton, which typically requires 10,000 to 20,000 liters of water per kilogram.
Carbon emissions can also be reduced by 30 to 80 percent, depending on the recycling process and energy inputs. For a garment like a lungi, which typically uses 250 to 350 grams of fabric, partial substitution with recycled fibers could save between 1,000 and 3,000 liters of water per unit.
At scale, even conservative estimates suggest that if 200 million lungis annually incorporate recycled fibers, the resulting savings could reach hundreds of billions of liters of water and tens to hundreds of millions of kilograms of carbon emissions.
Yet these benefits are rarely captured in sustainability reporting, as they occur outside certified systems.
Risks of disruption
As global brands and policymakers push for greater traceability and formalization, there is growing concern about the potential impact on existing recycling ecosystems. Bangladesh is developing a circular textile roadmap for 2025 to 2030, aimed at increasing recycling rates and improving waste management.
However, researchers warn that formal systems may prioritize high-quality waste streams for certified recycling, potentially diverting material away from informal networks. This could raise input costs for small-scale producers and disrupt the economics of products like lungis.
Such shifts may also affect livelihoods, as informal recycling supports thousands of workers across collection, sorting and processing activities.
Toward a hybrid model
The lungi economy highlights the need for a more integrated approach to circular fashion. Rather than viewing informal and formal systems as separate, analysts suggest combining the efficiency and scale of existing networks with improved data collection and light-touch regulation.
This could include mapping waste flows, introducing low-cost traceability tools and supporting local recycling clusters without imposing high compliance costs.
For an industry seeking scalable solutions, the lesson is increasingly clear. Circularity is not starting from zero. It is already embedded in products like the lungi, operating at scale but largely unrecognized.
The challenge now is not only to innovate, but to measure and integrate what already exists before efforts to modernize the system risk undermining its foundations.
