Day 2

2 years of clean water for a textile worker in Bangladesh

Drop by drop more justice Drop by drop more justice

Live healthier with water filters

Look at your sleeve and touch the seam. Whether it's a T-shirt, suit or dress, we often don't notice the fine details of our clothing. But it's precisely these seams that turn different pieces of fabric into a piece of clothing that fits well. It's these seams that connect us with the textile workers in Bangladesh. Women and men like Rida, who spend many hours a day sewing these seams and thus making our clothes. Unfortunately, Rida and her colleagues do this under very unsafe conditions and for far too low a wage. The textile factories also heavily pollute their drinking water. Nevertheless, Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus believes that the textile sector in Bangladesh has made an important contribution to the positive social developments of the last two decades. For example, the Millennium Goal of halving poverty was achieved in 2013 (Zeit, 2014). However, a lot still needs to change so that women and men can lead a good and, above all, healthy life.

Max Gilgenmann presents his favorite project in the video

need

Clean drinking water for textile workers and their families in Bangladesh

activity

A local NGO installs and maintains water filters that purify contaminated groundwater, providing clean drinking water to textile workers' communities around the clock

Measurable performance

Number of households that have access to clean drinking water through the filters and number of water filters installed

Result

Textile workers and their families drink and use only clean and healthy water in their neighborhoods, reducing disease

Systemically relevant impact

Permanently improved health for those who suffer doubly from the impact of the textile industry; fewer absences due to illness from school and work

background

The expansion of the textile industry had less positive effects on the environment. Although Bangladesh is a land of water with its many rivers and swamps, the people there suffer from one of the world's worst shortages of drinking water (textile network, 2017). Factors that make groundwater undrinkable include salinization due to rising sea levels and heavy rainfall during the monsoon (Zeit, 2014), large-scale arsenic contamination and a lack of regulation of the industry (Sustainability, 2019). The factories in which Rida and her colleagues work use a lot of water and chemicals to produce our clothes. When the two are mixed together, very toxic wastewater is produced. Due to a lack of laws, this wastewater is usually discharged untreated back into the surrounding rivers. Around 3,000 textile factories in Dhaka work in this way. As early as 2000, the WHO spoke of the "largest mass poisoning in history" (Perras, 2016). The rivers flowing around the factories therefore often shine in the current trend colors of the season. The groundwater, which is increasingly poisoned, is used not only for irrigation in agriculture but also for laundry, hygiene, cooking and drinking water. According to Ridwanul Haque, water expert and founder of the Bangladeshi NGO Agroho, a large number of textile dyes have been detected in various vegetable and fruit samples in areas far away from the textile center of Dhaka. This also applies to the fish stocks of nearby and distant rivers. The poisoned water is often the only source of water for the textile worker communities who live in the immediate vicinity but also further away from the factories. The health consequences range from skin irritations, gastrointestinal disorders and poisoning to serious respiratory diseases and cancer (Sustainability, 2019).

The good deed

Today, with your good deed, you are giving Rida and her colleagues access to clean water. The partner organization Agroho identifies communities that suffer greatly from water pollution caused by the textile industry. It organizes the installation of so-called biosand filters. By storing the filtered water in their own tanks, the communities have free clean drinking water available around the clock. This improves domestic hygiene and drinking water supplies or, in some communities, makes them possible for the first time. In total, at least 90 households with an average of 5 members use one of these water filters. This means that the health of all community members can be greatly improved in a very short time. After the installation is complete, Agroho visits the communities at regular intervals and checks the functionality of the filter. The more filters that can be installed, the fewer people in Bangladesh suffer from an acute shortage of drinking water.

About Bangladesh

Dhaka

Capital city

166,303,494

Population

2,503.0

Gross domestic product per capita per year

Rank 129 of 191

Human Development Index (Human Development Index)

Bangladesh has 6 seasons instead of 4. There are Grismo (summer), Barsha (rainy season), Sharat (autumn), Hemanto (cool season), Sheet (winter) and Bashonto (spring).

About the organization and further information