Investigation of Ethiopian apparel industry’s fabric waste and its management strategies

Abstract

In this paper, waste generation, management, and minimization approaches of the apparel industry in Ethiopia are investigated. 53 supervisors of four sections of 17 apparel manufacturers located in Addis Ababa participated in the survey. A checklist was used to record the fabric wastage and a self-administered questionnaire was used to collect waste management and minimization strategies. Fabric was the major source of cut-and-sew waste accounting for 28.55% on average. The majority of the companies (63.6%) sell their wastes to small-scale enterprises, while few (9.1%) disposed to landfills. More than half of the companies (54.5%) had no waste minimization strategies. However, few of them use re-designing and minimum waste pattern cutting to increase fabric utilization. The jigsaw puzzle pattern layout technique improved the marker efficiency of the knit T-shirt manufacturing case company from 79.0% to 84.9%. This reduction in fabric wastage has implications for both profitability and environmental safety.