If you run a small or mid-sized garment factory in Pakistan, you have probably heard the word sustainability more times in the last three years than in the twenty before. You get asked about it in every buyer conversation, in each audit checklist, you hear this word in conference speeches and in emails from consultants. And most of the time it sounds like something meant for a factory ten times your size, with a dedicated team and a budget to match.
We are an SME garment manufacturer in Karachi, Pakistan. We make fashion wovens and workwear, and ship worldwide. We started in 2003 as a buying agency and moved into running our own factory around 2008. We are not a giant, and we did not begin this journey to be one. We just wanted to be the place where we worked as partners for the brands we manufactured for, with complete transparency. We started manufacturing at Garment Resources because buyers started asking questions we could not fully answer and when we looked honestly at the factories we worked with as agents, we did not like every answer we found.
This post is about what we did, in terms of ethical and sustainable manufacturing and what a factory of our size can realistically do without a large investment. This blog is not to boast. Ours is still work in progress, but we have started our journey, and that makes all the difference.
First, be honest about where you stand
The most useful thing we did was also the least glamorous. With the help of the German Importers’ Association, we sat down and wrote our sustainability report.
Initially, it was just something that we wanted to do as a marketing gimmick. But once it was ready, we realized that it gave us our exact standing. Putting numbers and facts on paper, such as our electricity use, our water use, our waste, our workforce, our safety arrangements and our policies, showed us gaps we had never even though of. Some were easy to fix while others were expensive and needed planning.
If you do only one thing from this post, do this. You do not need software or a consultant to begin. A simple document that covers energy, water, waste, workers, health and safety, and governance is enough. List what you do, what you do not do, and what you do badly. That list becomes your roadmap. Everything below came out of ours.
- Solar power
Energy is the easiest. In Pakistan, there is a cost and reliability problem. Grid tariffs are high and load-shedding disrupts production regardless of how well you plan.
Solar is the one sustainability measure that can make business sense on its own, without any buyer asking for it. We moved to solar much before we started thinking about sustainability to cover part of our factory’s electrical needs.
For a small factory, a few practical points:
- Start with your daytime load. Cutting, sewing and finishing mostly run in daylight hours, when solar produces the most. You do not need to go off-grid. Offsetting a meaningful share of daytime consumption is a good first target.
- Measure before you size. Pull 12 months of electricity bills and look at your peak and average consumption. Oversizing a system is a common and costly mistake.
- Look at the financing options. Capital purchase, installment arrangements and rooftop leasing models all exist in Pakistan. The right one depends on your cash position, so compare at least three quotes.
- Fix the waste first. Before buying panels, check for leaks in compressed air lines, old motors, lighting that could be switched to LED and machines left idling. The cheapest kilowatt is the one you do not use.
I want to put a disclaimer here. Solar needs upfront capital and good maintenance, including regular panel cleaning in Karachi’s dust. But it is the one item on this list where the savings can fund the next step.
2. A fire alarm system, even a manual one
This one is not optional, and it is not about buyers. Garment factories in this country have a painful history with fire, and any factory owner who has read about Baldia Factory Fire knows exactly what I’m talking about.
An automatic detection system is the ideal and if you can afford it, install it. If you cannot yet, do not wait. A manual fire alarm system is an affordable starting point
- Manual call points on every floor, near exits, clearly marked and unobstructed
- Audible alarms that can actually be heard over running machines, which means testing them in the loudest part of your floor
- Fire extinguishers of the right type, serviced on schedule and placed where workers can reach them
- Clearly marked, unlocked and unblocked emergency exits, with lit exit signs
- A written evacuation plan, posted on walls, with assembly points
- Drills, at least twice a year, with time recorded. A system nobody has practiced is a system that fails when it is needed.
3. A grievance mechanism
This is the step most small factories skip, and in our experience it changes the most.
A grievance mechanism simply means a clear, safe way for any worker to raise a problem, whether it is about pay, hours, behavior of a supervisor, harassment or safety, and to know that someone will respond. It does not require expensive technology.
We went ahead and installed a third party Grievance Mechanism by Fruit of Sustainability Pvt. Ltd. They have the best system. But this is totally doable on your own as well.
- Put it in writing. A short, basic policy that explains how to raise a concern, who receives it, and how long a response should take. Write it in Urdu, and in Sindhi or other languages your workers speak where needed.
- Offer more than one route. Some workers will not walk into an office. A locked complaint box, a named person from HR, and a worker representative on a committee give people options.
- Protect the person who complains. If the first worker who speaks up is punished, nobody will speak again. This is the single point that decides whether the system is real or decorative.
- Record and close every case. Log what was raised, what was done and when. Review the log monthly. Patterns show you where the real problems are.
- Tell workers what changed. A grievance system earns trust when people can see that something happened because of it.
4. The basics for people who spend eight hours or more with you
A worker who stands or sits at your facility for eight hours or more, six days a week, is spending most of their waking life inside your building. The basics are not a luxury. They are the minimum.
None of these require large capital:
- Clean, safe drinking water, available on every floor, with filters maintained and cleaned on a schedule
- Clean, working toilets in adequate numbers, with water, soap and ventilation, and separate for women and men
- Proper ventilation, lighting and temperature control. Exhaust fans, cleaning of vents and well-placed lighting improve both comfort and productivity
- A designated rest and eating area if possible that is clean and separate from the production floor
- A basic first aid box and trained first aiders, with a record of what is used and restocked
- Written contracts, proper wages on time, and accurate records of overtime
- Safe machinery, with guards and PPE such as masks, gloves and ear protection where the work calls for it
- Space for women workers to work safely, which means safe transport arrangements where possible, and a clear anti-harassment policy
One thing we learned: when you fix these, the effect shows up in attendance, in retention and in the behavior.
So what does this actually cost?
There’s no clear number, because every factory is different. But here is a rough way to think about it.
- Almost no cost: the sustainability report, a written grievance policy, fire drills, clear exits, water and toilet maintenance, wage and hour records
- Low cost: manual fire alarm and extinguishers, LED lighting, first aid, ventilation fixes, a rest area
- Larger investment, with a payback: solar power, energy-efficient machines, water recycling
Most of the journey sits in the first two groups. The common mistake is to think you must do the third before you are allowed to start the first.
What we personally got wrong and what is still on our list
We did not do all of this at once, and some of it we should have done earlier. We started the report later than we should have. We found gaps in documentation that we had assumed were covered. Some of our drills were not as serious as they needed to be at first.
There are also things we have not solved yet. We still need to change our fans to energy efficient ones, we still need a water monitoring system, we still need to organize some of our systems. We would rather say so than pretend otherwise. Buyers and auditors tend to trust a factory that are transparent rather than the one who says they are perfect.
Why this matters beyond our own floor
European brands are increasingly expected to know their supply chains and suppliers are expected to prove what they say. We would rather show our gaps than hide them, because that is the only way they get fixed. If you want to see what any of this looks like in practice, the floor is open.
Finally, here’s a short starter checklist for small factories
- Write a first sustainability report, even if it is five pages
- Check your fire exits, install a manual alarm, run your first drill this month
- Publish a grievance policy and set up two reporting channels
- Audit your drinking water, toilets and ventilation
- Collect 12 months of electricity bills and get three solar quotes
- Pick one gap from your report and fix it before the next quarter
You do not need to be big, and you do not need to be ready. You only need to begin, and to be honest about where you are starting from. And if you need any information or assistance, we, at Garment Resources are more than willing to share our experience.
