This document summarizes a study investigating fabric waste in the Ethiopian apparel industry. The study found that fabric waste averaged 28.55% of total fabric used, higher than in other countries. Cutting was the main source of waste. Most companies sold their waste rather than reusing or avoiding it. The conclusion recommends introducing recycling facilities and further research on waste minimization strategies to improve efficiency in the industry.

1. QUALITY MANAGEMENT
SEMINAR ON:
INVESTIGATION OF ETHIOPIAN APPAREL
INDUSTRY’S FABRIC WASTE AND ITS
MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES
Berihun Bizuneh & Ruth Tadesse
prepared by:- ID
1. Mitiku Kero Mamo…………….TTMR/289/15
2. Bezawit Yimer Dawud ……… TTMR/451/15
3. Kenea Regasa Tesema…………. TTMR/236/15
4. Alem Moges Kibret…………….. TTMR/051/15
March, 2023

2. 1. INTRODUCTION
 Waste materials can be defined as unwanted things that are
either leftovers or superfluous for the owner.
 Solid wastes in the apparel manufacturing industries include
 Fabric is the main input material to the apparel industry which
approximately accounts for more than half of the total product
cost
• design and production pattern papers,
marker papers,
• fabric scraps,
• cutting wastes, and
• trims such as damaged zippers, thread,
buttons, labels, fusing materials, and pads.

3. CONT…..
 In the pre industrial era, fabric was a precious
resource and it was cut as little as possible and
clothing was designed to avoid waste during cutting.
 In recent times, the custom-made garment
production process generates an estimated range of
10-20% fabric waste depending on the garment
style.
 The apparel industry demands an appropriate waste
management strategy for its sustainability.

4. CONT….
 The common waste management
approaches can be coined in the 7Rs
including:
 reduce,
reuse,
recycle.
 Therefore, there is a need to formulate a policy
of implementing waste management focusing on
waste elimination and reduction
regulating,
recovering,
rethinking, and
renovation concept.

5. CONT…
 The apparel industry in Ethiopia is growing.
 The sector’s export performance is low compared to
imported apparels.
 The sector has low productivity and inefficient
resource utilization

6. CONT..
 In this study, a survey of apparel manufacturers
located in Addis Ababa was conducted to
investigate waste management and
minimization strategies
 Fabric wastage can be determined by deducing
the weight of fabric equivalent to the
percentage of the marker efficiency from the
total weight of fabric taken from the store for
cutting.

7. CONT..
• Similar operation is carried out in s in panel
checking, sewing, and finishing sections.

8. 2. LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1. Textile wastes
 Pre-consumer textile wastes are manufacturing
wastes including selvages, trimmings, rejected
materials and/or low-grade garments, and offcuts of
saleable size (Chavan, 2014).
 Post-consumer textile wastes include any types of
garments and household textiles discarded after use
by the public (Domina & Koch, 1997).
2. LITERATURE REVIEW

9. 2.2. Waste management
 Globalization and technological advancements in the
textile and apparel industry has resulted in the
exhaustion of natural resources and increased
disposals to landfills (Claudio, 2007)
 Appropriate waste management is important:-
for the sustainability of the fashion industry
(Binotto & Payne, 2017)
in terms of profitability (Dumishllari & Guxho,
2016) and
environmental safety (Chavan, 2014).

10. CONT…
 However, the practice of Turkey’s manufacturers in
re-using cutting wastes to design other garments
rather than disposing them to landfills is exemplary
for developing countries (Esra & Kipoz, € 2019).
barriers to recycling in developing countries
are(Larney & Van Aardt, 2010):-
 lack of equipment and technology,
limited consumer awareness

11. CONT…
 Figure Waste management hierarchy (McDougall, White,
Franke, & Hindle, 2008).

12. 3. Methodology
3.1. Research framework
 The study was initiated to investigate one of the
problems of the Ethiopian apparel industry which
is poor resource utilization
 survey was designed to quantify the fabric waste
and investigate waste management and
minimization strategies.

13. 3.2. Sampling and data collection
 In this study, out of 32 fully functional medium
and large scale garment industries located in
Addis Ababa, the capital city of Ethiopia, 17
companies were surveyed.
 The first part of the questionnaire consists of
demographic information including gender,
job position, experience, and profession of
the respondents.

14. CONT…
 The second part consists of open-ended questions
regarding the types of wastes generated from their
section and their perceived amount on a five-point
scale (negligible, minor, moderate, major, and
severe),
 Practical observation of production lines was also
done during data collection

15. 3.4. Data analysis
 The rates on the perceived amount of each type of waste
were coded as 1 ¼ negligible, 2 ¼ minor, 3 ¼ moderate,
4 ¼ major and 5 ¼ severe and the waste management
strategies were coded as 1 ¼ stored, 2 ¼ sold, 3 ¼ re-
used and 4 ¼ land filled.
 Descriptive statistics such as frequency, percentages,
mean and standard deviations were used to analyze the
waste assessment and management data.

16. 4. Results and discussion
4.1. Demographic characteristics of respondents
 49.06% of the respondents were females, from which
54.72% have working experience for more than five
years
 The experience of the respondents is a good indicator of
the reliability of the responses.
 4.2. Assessment of waste
 fabric and trims are the main types of wastes

17. CONT…
 main sources of fabric waste includes:
 Sample development of different product styles;
 fabric faults such as holes, broken, floating,
 missing yarns and shade variation,
 size mix-ups and irregular pattern shapes
 inaccurate cutting and fusing;
 rejected components and garments

18.  Table: Some types of wastes and their perceived
level.
 The values of the standard deviation (SD) in
table show the average deviation of the
perceived amount of each waste from the mean
rate.
CONT…

19. 4.3. Quantification of fabric waste
 the cutting section was found to be the major source
of cut-and-sew wastes.
 Depending on its production time, each company
generates a fabric waste of 5.3-61.3 Kg per day on
average in a cutting routine.
 The companies also wasted 4.5%, 4.5%, and 1.1% of
the total fabric in panel checking, sewing, and
finishing sections respectively

20.  it was found that the 18.5% of fabric wasted in the
cutting section was perceived as a major waste, while
the 4% (in sewing) and 0.9% (in the finishing) of
fabric waste were perceived as moderate and minor
wastes respectively.
 The overall fabric loss (28.55%) implies that
Ethiopian garment industries generate a relatively
higher amount of waste than the garment industries in
Bangladesh (26.5%) and China (25%)
CONT…

21. 4.4. Waste management strategies
 As presented in Table blow, most of the companies
(63.6%) use selling their wastes to small enterprises
 However, only 18.2% of them try to avoid wastes
totally, while the remaining (18.2%) employ reuse
and disposal to landfills.
Table: Frequency (%) of waste management strategies

22. 4.5. case study
 A private vertically integrated textile company that has
more than 50 years of experience was considered as a
case company for waste minimization.
 A total of 30.5% of fabric, which is above the overall
average (28.55%), was wasted while producing 10,000
knit t-shirts on average

23. 5. conclusion
 The majority of the companies have no strategy for
waste minimization.
 The minimization of cut-and sew waste in
emerging countries such as Ethiopia is more of an
economic than environmental concern.
 As wastes cannot be totally avoided, the
introduction of a central recycling facility will be
important for protecting the environment.

24. Limitations of the study
• The scope f this study was limited to the medium
and large-sized apparel manufacturers in Addis
Ababa.
• Future research should focus on recycling, waste
minimization, improvement of fabric utilization
through the investigation of the factors that affect
marker efficiency, and the examination of lean
manufacturing strategies