Textile brands must pay attention to environmental responsibility

In Cangnan County, Zhejiang, with the development of the local recycled textile industry, small fading pollution has become a major ecological hazard. The picture shows the worker who was working for a day on August 16, 2010 was rushing to remove all the dust.

“A large number of printing and dyeing enterprises exceeding the standard emissions, while contaminating the local environment, also mean that there is a significant risk of environmental violations in the supply chain of textile brands.” On December 4, Ma Jun, director of the Public Environmental Research Center, told reporters.

On the same day, seven environmental protection organizations, including the Public Environmental Research Center, Chaolu Environmental Protection, and the Green Jiangnan, issued the third phase of the green selection textile research report in Beijing, which fully described the pollution map of China's textile industry. The report pointed out that a large number of printing and dyeing companies violated the new wastewater discharge standards and demanded that brands such as Polo, Uniqlo and Youngor face squarely the serious water pollution problems caused by the supply chain.

Many countries have not yet fully implemented the new standard. China is a major producer of textiles, with Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Guangdong, Fujian, and Shandong producing more than 90% of the nation's printing and dyeing cloth. The above report shows that in recent years, the water pollution situation is very serious in the highly concentrated Hangzhou Bay area of ​​the printing and dyeing industry, parts of the Taihu Lake Basin, as well as parts of the Pearl River Estuary and the Pearl River Delta.

"The production capacity is highly concentrated, and the discharge of pollutants in local areas has far exceeded the environmental capacity." Ma Jun said.

In order to reduce the emission of pollutants from printing and dyeing wastewater, China began to implement the "Emission Standard for Water Pollutants from Textile Dyeing and Finishing Industry" on January 1, 2013. The standard significantly tightened the emission limits for COD, aniline and other indicators, and set the emission standards for AOX and other indicators for the first time.

"For example, the COD index that everyone is familiar with can be discharged to 500mg/L. According to the new standard, it can only be less than 100mg/L." Ma Jun said.

In fact, the control technology for water contaminants in textile dyeing and finishing industries is basically available. The person in charge of the Department of Science and Technology Standards of the Ministry of Environmental Protection once stated that each control limit formulated in the new standard corresponds to a mature and reliable control technology.

However, the environmental protection organization found during the investigation that many regions have not fully implemented the new standard. Among the five provinces where the dyeing and finishing industry is highly concentrated, only the Zhejiang and Fujian provinces have relatively strictly enforced the new standards, and only Zhejiang province has more fully disclosed the data of the companies that violated the new standards.

“Zhejiang is the only country that has implemented the new standard and has made full disclosures. We appreciate the efforts made by Zhejiang Province in this regard, but such disclosure has also made us feel very heavy.” Ma Jun revealed that it occupied China's printing and dyeing industry. Half of the country's Zhejiang Province, in the first half of this year, there were more than 400 printing and dyeing enterprises, accounting for more than 90% of the total number of enterprises exceeding the standard. ”

In addition to serious over-standard wastewater in textile enterprises, the new standard has also brought new challenges to the disposal of dyeing and printing sludge. The chief writer of the report, Li Jie, said: “A printing and dyeing company in Shaoxing City used to print about 1 ton of sludge per day. After implementing the new standard, it now reaches 56 tons per day. Printing and dyeing companies in Shaoxing and Shaoxing counties The total amount of sludge produced per day amounts to 2,500 tons. At present, there is only one sludge disposal company with a daily processing capacity of 1,000 tons."

It is particularly important to develop a green supply chain. "The pollution in the textile printing and dyeing industry has become a constraint on the sustainable development of the more developed coastal regions. It is particularly important to promote the clean production of the brand industry chain in areas where the printing and dyeing industry concentrates, and green selection is particularly important." .

In March 2007, 21 environmental protection organizations initiated a green selection campaign that promoted green production and procurement through green consumption, and advocated that consumers use their own purchasing rights to influence corporate performance. At the same time, they called on these production companies and retailers to strictly manage them. The supply chain implements green procurement standards. The first industry selected by the project was the IT industry. In March 2012, it entered the second industry textile industry.

According to Ma Jun, in the first two reports of the textile industry, the amount of water pollutants in the textile industry was very large. In the entire industrial chain of spinning, production of fabrics, printing and dyeing, and production of ready-to-wear garments, the printing and dyeing sector consumes 85% of the total. % of water, 80% of energy and occupy 65% ​​of chemical emissions. “Now in the global division of labor, the garment processing sector has increasingly turned to Southeast Asian countries, but the printing and dyeing sector has remained largely in China.”

"After the release of the previous report, some brands such as Marks & Spencer Department took a major change. It promoted some important printing and dyeing companies to improve." Ma Jun said that like Zhejiang Qingmao Textile Printing and Dyeing Co., Ltd. A number of pollutants exceeded the standard, and later wastewater treatment facilities were upgraded and put into operation.

The third report issued this time pointed out that a number of brands such as Esquel, Nike, and Wal-Mart have begun to use a publicly available data to establish a supplier search mechanism, which may proactively identify pollution problems in the supply chain and promptly promote some suppliers. Make corrections. Polo, Uniqlo, Youngor and other brands, in the face of doubts about the supply chain pollution, are still responding negatively, and even blindly avoided.

Li Jie, a senior project manager at the Public Environment Research Center, said that during investigations, some of the suspected suppliers of famous brands involved violations of new emission standards. The violations involve not only general indicators such as COD and colorimetry, but also characteristic indexes such as aniline, indicating that the related enterprises' wastewater discharge contains toxic and harmful components.

For brands that have carried out daily searches, the report suggests that they should not stop at identifying risks. Instead, they should effectively promote suppliers that violate environmental regulations to make effective rectifications and make disclosures to the public. At the same time, given that the pollution in the textile industry is more upstream, we recommend that the brand extend the environmental management to the supply chain.

"A lot of printing and dyeing companies are not Tier 1 suppliers, but exist in the depths of the supply chain. Brands should extend into the depth of the supply chain." Ma Jun believes that it is possible to use the first-level management and identify the entire supply. The most heavily polluted part of the chain carries out direct management and intervention.

“The bigger the responsibility is, the bigger the brand is. This is an important reason why we choose these famous brands as the survey objects. Some companies may not respond to the environmental group’s queries, hear the voices of the community, or care about exposure, but he has to consider the consumers. The feelings." Ma Jun said, "I hope that through everyone's green choice, remove pollution for such a flourishing fashion industry!"

Information disclosure is a key environmental regulatory information disclosure is an important basis for the green supply chain. Since this year, five printing and dyeing provinces of Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Guangdong, Fujian, and Shandong have regularly issued quarterly reports focusing on monitoring supervisory monitoring information, while Zhejiang, Shandong, and Fujian have started real-time disclosure of online monitoring data.

Ma Jun pointed out: "There is a very critical issue. More and more companies are adopting a more subtle form of emission. Some of them go deep into the river and go deep into the offshore sea, and it is very difficult for you to confirm and sample. In these areas where printing and dyeing are concentrated, most companies manage the emissions and enter a very complicated pipe network system. It is difficult to determine who discharges such wastewater. Therefore, it is particularly necessary to promote the disclosure of relevant information by relevant departments."

He also stated that some contaminants need to be tested at the discharge outlet of the workshop, and some need to be tested at the general outlet. These are all within the scope of the enterprise. Most people do not have the right to enter, but the regulatory authority has such rights. of.

"With the release of monitoring data, not only will the green supply chain become possible, but consumers will be able to focus on these situations and green consumption will become possible." Ma Jun said that there will also be green credit and environmental litigation. “One of the big problems with environmental lawsuits is the lack of evidence because it is very difficult to obtain evidence. Through the disclosure of such information, problems such as lax enforcement and local protection that have been difficult to overcome for a long period of time may be resolved to a considerable degree.”