Jute Life Style Expo 2013 Bangladesh

Jute Life Style Expo 2013

Sweeping away carbon footprints with jute revival in Bangladesh

Jute used to be the country’s largest foreign exchange earner till the 1970s and then slowly with its decline, we saw the largest jute mill in the world – Adamjee in Narayanganj – shut down in 2002.

Recently, the discovery of jute genome sequencing has made us more optimistic about revival of the fibre. Bangladeshi scientists have successfully decoded the vital genome sequence of jute, of which this country is the world’s largest exporter.
After this discovery, opportunities have been created to evolve different stress tolerant (salinity, drought, insects and pests) jute varieties.

And in the series of this success, Traidcraft Exchange (TX) and TARANGO organised Jute Lifestyle Expo’13 from May 10-12.  The Opening Ceremony was held on Friday, May 10 at Dhaka Art Centre in Rabindra Sarovar, Dhanmondi.

Around 5500  people thronged to the exposition and organizers said that even with the on-going political turmoil, 394 orders were received for 1300 products which amounted to 5.5 lacs Taka approximately.

A list of interesting items were on display which included designed files/folders, ladies hand bags, photo frames, stationery holders and more.

TX is a British charity organization, and its mission is to promote approaches to trade that help poor people to get out of poverty and transform their lives.  The Jute Lifestyle Expo ’13 was organized under the project, ‘Jute:  an eco-friendly alternative for a sustainable future’, co-funded by the European Commission and Traidcraft and  TARANGO was its implementing partner and INTRADE Private Limited operated as a business facilitation unit for JDP producing SMEs under this project.

Traidcraft is trying to revive the past glory of jute and under this project, for the last four months the enlisted SMEs developed new range of Jute Diversified Products under the supervision of the renowned design consultant Chandra Shekhar Shaha. Around forty SMEs received design supports from the project and finally eighty ranges of lifestyle products made of jute with fashion values and functionalities, of around thirty SMEs, were displayed in the Exposition.

On the second day of the exposition, TX arranged a ‘Poster Art Competition’ where 2000 participants attended and within them 50 people were selected from them. Finally three winners won the competition among those 50.

In our economy and also for the poor communities in Bangladesh jute is becoming a vital sector. With growing global consciousness about environment and jute being almost an entirely environment friendly product, there is an opportunity to promote jute and Jute Diversified Products globally.  In addition, Bangladesh, a country of 153 million people, has huge potential for local consumption of JDPs. 

According to Bangladesh jute research institute (BJRI) officials under the ministry of agriculture, jute was mostly used to produce packaging materials and there were hardly any other use.

And jute materials lost its potential due to its non-moisture proof characteristics to synthetic materials as packaging substitutes in both large and micro levels. Therefore, large jute mills started to incur huge losses and had to be shut down.

It was only in the late 90’s that we understood that synthetic materials are not biodegradable and are clogging up the arteries and veins of our living. So, a fresh revival effort started and it is said that the jute production in Bangladesh was very high during the last two years.

Although jute is grown in almost all the districts of Bangladesh, greater Faridpur, Tangail, Jessore, Dhaka, Sirajganj, Bogra, Jamalpur, in the North for example Rangpur, then Mymensing, Kishoreganj are considered the better growing areas.

BJRI sources said that according to a recent research, very good quality jute can be extracted from our coastal belts as well – an area called Khepupara (Pakhimara station) in Patuakhali has resulted in good quality jute production.

*This article was first published in the Weekend Independent of The Independent - http://theindependentdigital.com/index.php?opt=view&page=53&date=2013-05-24





Products made from jute

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