Latest / The Operations Podcast with Fexingo: Process, People, and Profit in Modern Business / How a Textile Mill Cut Water Usage by 70 Percent
Transcript
- Lucas: So earlier this year I came across a number that stopped me. A denim mill in Bangladesh was using 350 liters of water to make a single pair of jeans. That's roughly what the average person in Dhaka consumes in three days. Luna: Three days of drinking, cooking, washing — all poured into one pair of pants. Lucas: Exactly. And this wasn't an outlier. Industry average for denim finishing is about 300 to 400 liters per pair. But this particular mill — let's call it DenimCo, one of the largest exporters in the country — decided that number had to come down. Their target: 100 liters. Luna: That's a 70 percent cut. How do you even begin to shave off that much water without shutting down production? Lucas: They did it in three phases over about 18 months. Phase one was the biggest swing: they replaced conventional dyeing with foam dyeing. Instead of submerging yarn in a bath of indigo and water, they applied the dye as a foam — like shaving cream — using a specially designed applicator roller. Water usage in that step dropped by 85 percent. Luna: But foam dyeing has been around for a while. Why didn't they do it sooner? Lucas: Good question. The technology existed, but the capital cost was roughly two million dollars for the retrofit. And there was a quality risk — early foam systems had uneven coverage, which meant rework. What changed was water pricing. The local utility raised industrial water tariffs by 40 percent over three years. Suddenly the two-million-dollar investment had a payback period of 14 months. Luna: So the economics flipped. That's the kind of thing that gets a CFO's attention. Lucas: Right. Phase two was about the remaining water-intensive processes — washing and finishing. Traditionally, after dyeing, jeans go through multiple wash cycles to soften the fabric and create that worn-in look. DenimCo installed reverse-osmosis filtration units in the wash houses. That let them recycle about 70 percent of the water from each wash cycle back into the next one. They also switched to high-efficiency nozzle spray guns for stone-washing, which cut water usage by another 40 percent. Luna: And the third phase? Lucas: Phase three was the soft stuff — but it mattered. They retrained all 200 operators on the new equipment and on leak detection. They set up a simple visual management board in each section showing liters per pair in real time. If a machine was using more water than the target, a red light flashed and a supervisor had to investigate within 15 minutes. That alone reduced waste by 12 percent. Luna: So the operators became part of the feedback loop, not just button-pushers. Lucas: Exactly. And the results were striking. After 18 months, the mill was averaging 105 liters per pair — down from 350. That's a 70 percent reduction. Annually, they saved about 1.5 billion liters of water. But here's the thing that surprised me: their energy bill dropped 12 percent as well, because they were pumping and heating less water. And fabric quality scores actually improved — less chemical runoff meant fewer streaks and color variations. Luna: There's a lesson there about unintended upside. They went in to save water and ended up with better product and lower energy costs. Lucas: It's a classic operations principle: when you remove waste from one part of a system, other parts often get cleaner too. But it wasn't all smooth sailing. The foam dyeing applicators required daily cleaning because the foam nozzles would clog. That added 20 minutes of downtime per shift. The team had to redesign the cleaning procedure to use compressed air instead of water, which actually sped up the process. Luna: So they solved a new problem with another process tweak. Lucas: Right. And the reverse-osmosis membranes needed replacement every 18 months — a recurring cost of about $80,000. But the water savings covered that easily. The mill calculated net annual savings of about $600,000 after all costs. Not huge for a factory that size, but the bigger win was resilience. When the next drought hit — and Bangladesh has had two in the last five years — they weren't scrambling for water allocation permits like their competitors. Luna: That's the kind of operational buffer most companies don't think about until it's too late. Lucas: Exactly. And there's a broader point here about benchmarking. The global average for denim production is still around 300 liters per pair. If DenimCo can hit 105, why can't others? A lot of mills claim water is too cheap to justify the investment. But DenimCo proved the payback is there when you factor in energy savings, quality gains, and risk mitigation. Luna: It makes you wonder what other industries have similar low-hanging fruit. I'm thinking of breweries, pulp and paper, semiconductor wafer cleaning — all huge water users. Lucas: Absolutely. And the same playbook applies: map your water balance, find the biggest flows, question whether you need that volume at all, then recycle what you can. The technology exists. It's usually a matter of price signals and leadership. Luna: Speaking of leadership — we keep this show free of ads and sponsored segments by design. If these kinds of deep dives into real operations stories have helped you think differently about your own processes, you can support the show at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Lucas: Yeah, we believe the work should speak for itself. No commercial breaks, no product pitches — just the story. That link is buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo, if you want to be part of keeping it that way. Luna: And it genuinely makes a difference. Every contribution goes straight into research and production time. Lucas: So back to DenimCo. They're now targeting 80 liters per pair by the end of next year. They're experimenting with ozone washing, which uses gas instead of water to fade denim. Early tests show another 20 percent reduction. And they've started sharing their process with other mills in the Dhaka Export Processing Zone — not out of charity, but because the whole supply chain benefits when water stress eases. Luna: That's a nice capstone. A single factory's efficiency gain becomes a shared resource for the entire ecosystem. Lucas: Exactly. And it started with one number: 350 liters per pair. Someone decided that number was unacceptable and set a target of 100. The rest was just good operations, one process change at a time. Luna: I think that's the takeaway worth sitting with. Not the technology, but the decision to commit to a specific, measurable goal. Lucas: Yeah. And next week we'll look at how a hospital cut surgical glove waste by 80 percent — a story that touches on supply chain, habit change, and a surprisingly controversial piece of plastic. Luna: Looking forward to it.