Around 75% of the world’s clothing products contain cotton in some form, and the cutting-room floors of garment factories across Bangladesh generate vast volumes of fabric scraps long before those clothes ever reach a store shelf. A Dhaka-based startup, Ecovia, has built its business on that overlooked waste stream, converting pre-consumer cotton scraps into compostable packaging designed to replace conventional plastic.
Ecovia sources fabric offcuts from Bangladesh’s ready-made garment sector, one of the world’s largest, where an efficient local supply chain makes such waste both abundant and cheap to collect. The material is cleaned, sorted and processed to extract cellulose fiber through a chemical process, which is then converted into a bio-based film suitable for products ranging from shopping bags and apparel polybags to anti-static packaging for electronics.
The company’s packaging is certified to decompose in soil within 180 days, a fraction of the roughly 450 years conventional plastic can take to break down, according to Ecovia. Its products carry certifications including Din Certco, ULVS under ISO 14855-1:2012, and Amfori’s “Trade with Purpose” standard.
Ecovia’s origin traces to co-founders Rashik Hasan and Riasat Zaman, who set out to find an alternative raw material that could decompose within months rather than centuries. Early experiments with fish scales as a bioplastic feedstock were abandoned after the team found sourcing costs too high to achieve product-market fit. Zaman, a textile engineer whose research focused on pre-consumer apparel waste, proposed cotton-based garment scraps instead, reasoning that Bangladesh’s scale as a garment manufacturing hub would guarantee a steady, low-cost supply.
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The company has since built commercial partnerships that extend its reach beyond Bangladesh. It has worked with Recover, a mechanical cotton recycler, to formulate durable bale wraps capable of holding heavier loads of recycled cotton fiber, incorporating Recover’s fiber-dust byproduct, branded RParticle, as one input. Domestically, Ecovia recently signed an agreement with CP Five Star Bangladesh to introduce compostable packaging across the fried chicken franchise’s food service operations, beginning with U-cut bags, as the companies look to cut plastic use amid rising consumer demand for sustainable alternatives.
Ecovia was also the first enterprise in Bangladesh to receive a grant from the Climate Innovation Fund, a joint initiative of the British Asian Trust and the SAJIDA Foundation, which provides funding, business support and mentorship to climate-focused startups. Company executives have said the backing is intended to help scale production and commercial partnerships.
The venture positions itself at the intersection of two pressing industry problems: Bangladesh’s mounting plastic pollution and the textile sector’s growing volume of pre-consumer waste. By using patented technology to address both simultaneously, Ecovia has distinguished itself from many compostable packaging startups that rely on virgin agricultural inputs such as cornstarch or sugarcane, instead giving a second life to material that would otherwise be discarded from factory floors.
Industry analysts tracking sustainable packaging note that regulatory pressure on single-use plastics is intensifying globally, particularly across the European Union and among multinational retailers setting their own packaging targets. Compostable alternatives derived from textile waste, such as Ecovia’s, offer brands a way to address both plastic reduction and textile circularity commitments simultaneously.
For Ecovia, the ambition extends beyond a single product line. Company founders describe the goal as closing a loop that begins in the cotton field, passes through the garment factory, and ends with packaging that returns nutrients to the soil, supporting the same land that grows the next cotton crop.
Executives say the company is now working to expand production capacity and broaden its client base beyond Bangladesh, targeting food service, retail and e-commerce brands seeking to cut reliance on petroleum-based plastics.