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Cooling Factories: A Smart Investment
21 Sep
Summary
- Factory cooling investments in Bangladesh pay back within four years.
- High heat stress erased 4.1% of factory revenue annually.
- Brands are urged to share the cost of cooling investments.
Investing in cooling systems for garment factories in Bangladesh presents a financially sound strategy, with research indicating a payback period of just four years for measures like roof insulation and improved ventilation. These cooling efforts are crucial as climate change increasingly impacts apparel production hubs.
High temperatures inside factories, particularly in ironing and finishing sections, lead to significant heat stress for workers. This stress has been quantified as erasing approximately 4.1% of annual revenue on average for affected factories, posing substantial financial risks to both manufacturers and the global brands they supply.
Researchers emphasize the need for brands to financially support these adaptation measures. The American Apparel and Footwear Association also released a toolkit, proposing that brands share the costs of resilience measures, recognizing that individual manufacturers may not see sufficient returns to fund them alone.
