Zara And Many Other Clothing Brands Have Been Exposed To Illegal Underground Sewage Treatment.

Many people like fashion, beautiful clothing and shoes and hats, but few people know that the pollution behind these fashionable products may not even think that there are serious environmental violations in some international and domestic brands.

9 afternoon, friends of nature, public environmental research center, Dahl asked, ring friends technology, Nanjing green stone and other 5 environmental protection organizations jointly Tencent green channel jointly issued the "Research Report for the fashion pollution - green choice textile brand supply chain pollution". The report shows that a large number of large textile brands and garment retailers have serious environmental problems in China's supply chain. Violation Behavior has a serious impact on China's water environment.

According to Ma Jun, director of the public environment research center, China's textile industry accounts for about half of the world's fiber processing, and textile and garment exports account for 34% of the world's total. The status of the "world factory" in the textile industry has promoted China's economic development and employment, and the fashionable and cheap clothing made in China has also adorned the world. However, the textile industry produces nearly 25 million tons of waste water and other pollutants each year, and pollutes rivers, lakes, skies, oceans, and even soil and groundwater.

The report shows that China's textile industry has a large volume of sewage and inefficient water use. Printing and dyeing wastewater accounts for 80% of the total textile wastewater discharge. The composition is complex and may contain many harmful effects. material 。 At the same time, the textile industry lagged far behind most other industries in recycling water, resulting in extremely low efficiency of water use.

"A large number of textile enterprises have records of environmental violations, and can not achieve stable discharge." Ma Jun told reporters that more than 6000 textile enterprises were included in China's pollution map database, some of which were penalized or not dealt with for a time limit because of private pipelines, sewage straight rows, abnormal use of sewage treatment facilities, and excessive discharge of pollutants. In these enterprises, there are many suppliers of large international and domestic brands.

According to the survey, after investigating the relationship between the textile products manufacturers and the well-known brands, the environmental protection organizations sent letters to CEO of 46 enterprises on March 22, 2012, 26 and 29.

Ma Jun told reporters that after the letter was sent out, some brands had responded. Among them, Nike, Yida, WAL-MART, H&M, Levi 's, Adidas, Burberry and so on have begun to take positive actions to carry out queries and push them forward.

Apart from replying to the specific problems mentioned in the environmental protection organization's letter, some brands also expressed support for China's participation in environmental protection work and environmental protection organizations.

In the reply, Nike said: "as a long-term member of the green choice alliance, we (Nike) support the work of the public environmental research center (IPE) and related environmental protection organizations in China to promote the environmental and social responsibility of Chinese enterprises." "Nike company is not only using the public information database collected by IPE, but also requires the supply chain partners in China to pay close attention to their own environmental behaviors, and in the case of need, announce the rectification plan."

Levi, "s said in reply," we believe that the database is a useful tool to determine compliance with our Chinese suppliers. It reveals problems in the industry and helps to focus attention on suppliers who need urgent regulation and participation. "

"We welcome the promotion of green choice alliances in recent years," Adidas said. China Corporate environmental and social responsibility efforts also commend IPE's leadership role in promoting information disclosure on pollution and environmental violations. " "If suppliers violate the law, including environmental and pollution control regulations, we require suppliers to take corrective actions. If the violation can not be corrected, we will write a warning letter to follow up, which may lead to termination of business relationship.

C&A, Tesco, Gap, Lining, Target, Next, Uniqlo and other brands have not communicated with the above environmental organizations before, but this time they can still communicate in a relatively short time. Some enterprises have begun to study the violation of suppliers in depth, and it is also worthwhile to consider the establishment of a supplier retrieval system.

"However, 32 out of 48 brands did not respond." It includes international brands such as Marks & Spencer, Esprit, Calvin Klein, Armani, Carrefour, and other famous brands such as 360, Anta, YOUNGOR and so on.

Zara replied, "we regret that we can not answer individual responses from our schools, universities and professionals to our business model."

"It is true that some brands fail to respond because of objective factors, such as the limited time to reply, the process of internal information transmission, the confusion of language and supplier names. But some brands did not respond because of their conflict with social supervision. The report said. It is reported that some of the suspected suppliers of Zara have serious problems. Zara, one of the largest fashion retail companies in the world, claims on its website that it is "sincere to establish contacts with a wide range of stakeholders and the community; continue to engage in dialogue with the stakeholders and social organizations mentioned above; finally, the overall business activities should be transparent, especially the strategy of sustainable development should be transparent."

"We believe that ZARA has violated its public commitments. We call on ZARA to stop responding to environmental organizations' queries on the basis of business models and promote their supply chain to solve the pollution problem." Ma Jun said.

"The biggest problem in the textile industry's efforts to reduce emissions is that there is no motivation." The report suggests that the government should strengthen supervision, expand information disclosure, and guide enterprises to save energy and reduce consumption by means of marketization. It is suggested that textile brands and retailers should make use of information disclosure and join forces with stakeholders to promote emission reduction in supply chain. It is recommended that textile manufacturers comply with social expectations and implement cleaner production. The report also suggests that consumers should pay attention to the environmental performance of enterprises, promote green production with green consumption, and eliminate pollution of their favorite fashion products.