Abdur Razzaque – Director of Recycle Raw Ltd

Dhaka-based Recycle Raw Ltd. is a textile waste sorting/management company that claims to be the only compliant textile-garment waste-sorting company in Bangladesh and is on a mission to turn the waste industry into gold.

The company now manages the entire supply chain, from the collecting of raw materials through the export of the goods, encompassing all processes. The company's primary goals are to streamline the sorting process, enhance the work environment, and occupy maximum supply chain processes to support their customers best.

Our recent interaction with Abdur Razzaque, Director of Recycle Raw Ltd., talks about their journey as a textile waste management company and their commitment to work for a recycling-driven circular fashion ecosystem along with the company’s future plans.

YnFx: What is the story behind Recycle Raw?

Razzaque: Recycle-Raw™ is a textile waste sorting/management company in Bangladesh that started its journey in 2017 formally, but we started our journey in 2014 without registration. We did the groundwork for the last three years before starting. One more point, my father worked as a waste collector for a long time without much value addition at that time; now we are adding enough value & still analyzing how to add more value here.

RECYCLE-RAW LIMITED has three (03) business partners. Ibrahim Sajib (Chairman), Abdur Razzaque (Managing Director) & Kajol Bahadur (Director). Razzaque & Sajib were university friends. Razzaque & Kajol have been friends since childhood. Razzaque, Sajib had a dream to be a businessman but, of course, environment-friendly anything. We tried in 2-3 sectors; we have loosened all of our reserves & earnings from our job. Being textile technologists, we found that textile waste management can be one option. But of course, we will not be fixed as only textile waste management, but it can be an initial option since we have plenty of textile waste. Hence, we both decided to gather knowledge, and study theoretically & practically. My father (Razzaque’s father) helped us with his knowledge best. I (Razzaque) went to China to study recycling, where I have taken a master's degree in Recycle Fashion, besides looking for customers. Sajib, started his master's in International Business. Besides, we keep working on this project. I found Kajol as a ground worker (my friend) & he had lost almost every penny by doing his own business (waste collector), he had a very big amount of debt, and he was in an ocean of frustration. We studied the reason for his failure. And we have taken him as our partner. In 2016, we started sampling for different recyclers & started to understand the quality parameters of different buyers (chemical, mechanical recyclers, upcyclers). By fine-tuning till today, we are in the present situation. Our present capacity is 2000MT/month & keeps increasing. RECYCLE-RAW LIMITED is the only compliance sorting company in Bangladesh & we say, we are a one-stop solution for the following services: Scale, Exact quality feedstock, traceability & logistic service. 

YnFx: What is the main goal of the company?

Razzaque: We have established the 1st & only compliance facility in Bangladesh that is RECYCLE-RAW™ LIMITED in this waste management industry. We want to make this sector more formal than it is right now. We have a long vision to move ahead together. We want to work not only in a circular fashion but also in the circular economy, hence will increase the working area step by step.

YnFx: How do you source the various raw materials for your company?

Razzaque: We buy textile/garment waste from the factory directly as well as from the local market as 3rd party.

YnFx: How are its raw materials sourced currently, and what are the future plans to enhance it?

Razzaque: We buy textile/garment waste from the factory directly as well as from the local market as 3rd party. We believe manufacturers will come forward to make the waste handling supply chain smaller than the present. Hence we are working for alliances among manufacturers, brands, and organizations & to reduce the supply chain path & ensure traceability.

YnFx: What is the capacity of the company to sort and recycle textile waste?

Razzaque: Our present sorting capacity is 2000MT/month & we keep expanding. We don’t recycle by ourselves presently, we supply accurate raw materials to the recyclers as feedstock, but We have the plan to open our own fiber opening facility soon so that we can supply fiber to spinners as well. We provide the following services, scale up homogenous materials, ensure traceability, make sure proper quality & logistics services.

YnFx: What are the various countries Recycle Raw exports its product to?

Razzaque: Presently, we are supplying recyclable & spinnable raw materials to 10 countries, and they are in Europe, India & USA zone.

YnFx: What are the future plans of the company?

Razzaque: We are about to build our next plant, whose capacity will be 10000MT/month (only for POST Industrial waste). We have a plan to work with post-consumer waste as well if the Bangladesh government allows us. Always RECYCLE-RAW™ think of value addition in waste & keep the environment clean for the future generation. And I want to repeat, we will work not only for circular fashion but also the circular economy, hence will increase working area step by step.