Panipat Recycles the World's Clothes but Not Its Pollution, Contends Ground Report

Panipat Recycles the World's Clothes but Not Its Pollution, Contends Ground Report
Environmental Cost Recycling at industrial scale carries environmental costs that certification frameworks do not always reach—particularly when residue management remains informal and largely invisible to regulators. Foundation for MSME Clusters

Asia's largest mechanical textile recycling cluster has spent the better part of a decade acquiring the infrastructure of sustainability—treatment plants, cleaner fuels, international certifications. A detailed diagnostic study now offers the most granular environmental assessment of Panipat to date, and its findings complicate the progress narrative: pollution persists, residue management remains opaque, and technology adoption is deeply uneven across the cluster's enterprises.