Trust infrastructure for circular manufacturing · Bangladesh

Every kilogram of jhut, accounted for.

Bangladesh's garment factories generate 330,000–500,000 tonnes of cutting waste every year — and only 5–7% is recycled domestically. JhutPass adds what the jhut economy is missing: a grading standard, a network of optimally-sited sorting hubs, and digital certificates that make every kilogram traceable, tradeable, and ready for the EU's Digital Product Passport era.

Try the live demo How it works
330–500k tjhut generated per year (GIZ study)
5–7%domestically recycled today
$4B / yrvalue potential (BGMEA estimate)
2027–28EU Digital Product Passport for textiles
Sources: GIZ / RMG Bangladesh (Sep 2025); BGMEA via The Daily Star; European Commission ESPR (Reg. 2024/1781).
The problem

A $4 billion stream is flowing out of the country unverified

Jhut — pre-consumer garment waste — is not scarce; certainty about it is. No grading standard, no chain of custody, no certificates. Factories can't prove what they wasted, recyclers can't prove what they bought, and buyers can't verify anything.

330–500k tgenerated / year
(4,000+ factories)
5–7%recycled in Bangladesh
(18–24k t capacity)
>55%exported RAW —
value captured abroad
<5%upcycled; rest downcycled,
burned or landfilled

📉 Price blindness

Ungraded jhut sells at low-band prices because buyers price in quality risk. Graded, certified lots earn premiums.

🚫 Compliance wall

From ~2027 the EU DPP makes verified material data a market-access condition for textiles. Unverifiable waste = unverifiable recycled content.

👥 Invisible workforce

The informal collection-sorting chain has no contracts, IDs, or finance access — and formal recycling risks displacing it (Circular Economy & Sustainability, 2026).

The solution

Four layers of trust — standards, hubs, certificates, analytics

JhutPass is not another marketplace. Marketplaces list waste; we make waste legible. We are the trust layer the whole market trades on.

4

Compliance & analytics

DPP-ready certificates, buyer ESG audit reports, and cluster-level waste-flow dashboards — the "national jhut database" recommended by GIZ, running privately from day one.

3

Market liquidation

Certified bales flow to domestic recyclers and spinners — interoperating with existing marketplaces and brand-driven trackers rather than competing with them.

2

Physical network — "Pass Hubs"

Micro-hubs sited by p-median optimization over factory clusters (weighted average factory→hub distance ≈ 13 km in our network model). Existing informal yards convert as franchisees — the informal chain becomes the formal chain.

1

Standards & capture

The Bangladesh Fiber Grade scale (BF-1…BF-5): a published grading rubric, a low-cost physical kit, and a mobile app that registers waste points, weights, photos, and chain-of-custody at the source.

Live prototype

Demo dashboard — simulate a factory, grade a lot, issue a certificate

Working prototype of the JhutPass decision layer. Numbers below use the same conservative assumptions as our Monte Carlo simulation (20,000 trials).

① Factory waste & recovery simulator

Status quo
value (BDT)
With JhutPass
value (BDT)
Annual gain
(BDT)
Jhut generated / year
Through JhutPass (graded)
Value, status quo (unsorted ≈ 25 BDT/kg)
Value, graded mix (≈ 31.9 BDT/kg avg, net of fees)
Annual value gain
Certificates issued / year

Grade-mix weighted price 31.9 BDT/kg from BF-1…BF-5 mix (55/42/30/18/7 BDT/kg at 14/26/30/20/10%) minus BDT 2.9/kg JhutPass fees. Unsorted price band 20–30 BDT/kg (illustrative).

② Hub network (p-median, k=8)

factory cluster (size = waste share) JhutPass hub assignment

Illustrative network model — clusters represent real production geographies (Gazipur, Savar–Ashulia, Narayanganj, Chattogram…); weighted avg factory→hub distance ≈ 13 km.

③ BF grading scale — click a grade

Select a grade to see its specification.

④ Certificate engine — issue a demo JhutPass certificate

Demo certificate rendered client-side for illustration — not a production credential. Production certificates are mass-balance based and verifiable against hub audit records.

Business model

Fee-per-kilogram economics with a compliance moat

Grading & handling

BDT 1.5/kg (≈0.4–0.6% of bale value). Hub executes, JhutPass scores.

Certificates

BDT 500 per certified lot. The audit-saving + premium-capture instrument.

SaaS & analytics

BDT 2,000/mo factory waste ledger; buyer & partner dashboards at $250–500/mo.

Year-1 per-hub Monte Carlo (20,000 trials)

MetricValue
Profit P10 / P50 / P90+0.08M / +0.99M / +1.18M BDT
Probability of profitable year92% (15% adoption-stall scenario modeled)
Throughput P50≈1,710 t graded/yr
Certificates P50≈4,370 /yr
Hub conversion cost (one-off)BDT 0.4M

Full assumptions in the project simulation pack (simulation/hub_economics.py). Fees are 0.4–0.6% of bale value — priced to be invisible next to the 10–25 BDT/kg grading premium.

Impact

Conservative five-year scenarios

YearHubsTonnes graded/yr% of national streamValue retained (M USD/yr)Formalized jobs
Y134,5001.1%0.3529
Y2812,0002.9%0.9278
Y31624,0005.8%1.85156
Y42842,00010.1%3.23274
Y54567,50016.3%5.19441

Value retained = graded/certified domestic price premium over raw-export price (illustrative differential, BDT→USD ≈ 117). Environmental effect is reported as tonnes diverted from raw export, open burning and landfill; South Asia accounts for 37% of global open-burning textile emissions (Environ. Sci. & Pollution Research, 2026). We do not invent CO₂-per-kg factors.

Design principle: the 2026 literature (Circular Economy & Sustainability, DOI 10.1007/s43615-026-00844-z) warns that formal recycling can displace informal waste livelihoods — "green value appropriation". JhutPass is built the other way: existing informal yards become franchisees, collectors get worker IDs and formal per-kg rates. The informal chain becomes the formal chain.