There Are Environmental Violations In The Supply Chain Of Foreign Large Garment Brands In China.

The effluent from a textile mill is frothing on the surface of the Changjiang River.

In recent years, the popular alkali reduction and island silk technology are used in wastewater treatment.

The content is as high as tens of thousands of milligrams / liters.

These new auxiliaries are very complex in technical treatment, and no special effective pollution treatment technology has been developed yet.

"The textile industry produces nearly 25 billion tons of waste water and other pollutants every year. No matter from the main pollutants such as chemical oxygen demand or ammonia nitrogen, the textile industry is one of the largest sources of pollution in China."

Ma Jun, director of the public environment research center, told reporters recently.

In April 9th, 5 environmental protection organizations such as the Public Environmental Research Center released the Research Report on "green choice textile brand supply chain pollution" in Beijing.

Retailer's presence in China

Serious in existence

In some enterprises, there are such phenomena as privately built underground pipes, sewage straight rows, abnormal use of sewage treatment facilities, and so on, causing pollution to China's water environment.

The report publisher questioned the 48 brand enterprises including Levi's, Adidas, CK, Armani and YOUNGOR three times on March 22, 2012, 26 and 29, and asked questions about the violation of the supply chain environment. In the middle of April, 16 enterprises replied.

New technologies emerge and pollution treatment is still not up to date.

In recent years, the total amount of waste water discharged from the textile industry and the proportion of the total wastewater discharged in China have been increasing linearly.

As the upper reaches of the brand clothing supply chain, the pollution situation faced by the textile industry has structural contradictions, mainly in the printing and dyeing, dyeing and finishing fields.

The above research report points out that at present, dyeing and finishing wastewater accounts for 80% of the total textile wastewater discharge.

The total discharge amount of dyeing and finishing wastewater in 5 provinces of Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Shandong, Guangdong and Fujian accounts for 90% of the total dyeing and finishing waste water in China.

"The more prominent contradiction in recent years is the continuous development and application of new processes, new raw materials and new dyes, making the pollutants discharged from the production process become more and more complex, and the difficulty of processing is increasing."

As a research report writer, Ma Jun is deeply impressed by the pollution caused by the new process of textile industry: "for example, in recent years, the amount of alkali reduction and island silk technology has been widely used. The COD in wastewater (the important index indicating the degree of water pollution", the lighter the pollution level is, the higher the content is as high as tens of thousands of mg / litre).

These new auxiliaries are very complex in technical treatment, and no special effective pollution treatment technology has been developed yet.

After treatment of printing and dyeing wastewater, sludge disposal is also a national problem that has not yet been resolved. "

At present, the concentration of COD from printing and dyeing wastewater in Jiangsu and Zhejiang dyeing and printing enterprises has increased from less than 1000 mg / liter to 2000 mg / liter.

The output of polyester fiber is the largest in China's fiber production. Alkali reduction technology has become an important part of polyester production. The terephthalic acid produced by alkali decrement process is difficult to deal with either biochemical or physicochemical methods. This is one of the main reasons for the relevant environmental index in Zhejiang and Jiangsu alkali reduction process.

The waste water that does not meet the COD emission standards directly discharges the organic components, which will consume oxygen in the water, causing fish and shrimp to die in batches and seriously damage the water, sediment and their ecosystem.

In fact, the problem of sewage treatment brought about by the rapid development of printing and dyeing industry has attracted public attention around 2004.

At that time, the state environmental authorities had such commentary: after joining the WTO, textile dyeing and finishing is a good industry. In recent years, it has increased by two digits (some over 30%), and the discharge of waste water and various pollutants has increased year by year.

Due to the excessive concentration of printing and dyeing and the unstable rate of compliance, there is still a certain gap between the total amount of pollutants discharged and the environmental capacity.

Over the past few years, the development of new and high technology has been regarded as a prescription for solving environmental problems.

"However, the technology of pollution treatment in textile industry has not improved with the new technology. This is not because of the lack of technological research and development, but because no new technology has been developed."

Ma Jun pointed out that pollution treatment is not only a technical or financial problem, but first of all, enterprises lack the power to control pollution.

1 million 200 thousand yuan a year, the environmental penalty.

Despite the increasingly stringent requirements of the government for environmental protection in textile industry, local environmental protection departments have difficulty in ensuring that factory enterprises really implement these national standards.

Law enforcement is weak and environmental litigation is difficult, resulting in low cost of illegal activities. Water resources prices are artificially low, resulting in enterprises not having the power to circulate efficiently and efficiently.

"The textile industry wastewater discharge is large, even if the standard discharge, will also cause pressure on the environment, not to mention the actual operation of many textile enterprises can not achieve stable discharge standards."

Li Li, director of science and technology research center, told reporters.

The public environmental research center launched the "China water pollution map database" in 2006. In the database, up to February 20, 2012, there were more than 6000 records of violation of the standards in textile enterprises, including: privately built underground pipes, untreated straight row pollutants, abnormal sewage treatment facilities, over standard total discharge of pollutants, unauthorized use of the sealed production facilities, and being supervised by environmental problems.

Based on the "China water pollution map database", this study took six months, first through massive search, and then to analyze the financial reports and the listing reports of listed companies, and arranged the supply chain of many brands of clothing, and found out who supplied each link to the bottom and established the relationship between textile suppliers and brand clothing.

Wang Jingjing, deputy director of the public environment research center, told reporters that a number of textile enterprises that exceeded the standards were located in the upstream of the supply chain of large international and domestic brand clothing, completely separated from the environmental management scope of brand clothing enterprises.

Dongguan Fu'an textile printing and dyeing Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of Futian industrial group, is one of the largest suppliers of textile industry in the world.

The company has been working closely with Gap, Tommy Hilfiger, Reebok, Nike and other famous brands for a long time.

"Such a listed company, whose reputation is outstanding in the industry, is puzzled by its environmental violations."

Ma Jun said that the factory had privately built two pipelines to steal in 2006. "An iron hidden pipe with a diameter of 25 cm is controlled by two hidden valves, and more than 20 thousand tons of untreated printing and dyeing wastewater will be stolen every day.

At that time, in the outfall of the company's Mazhou River in Dongguan and Shenzhen, the dark red sewage laid an obvious pollution zone on the river.

The company was then paid a fine of 217 thousand yuan.

But for such an annual output of billions of enterprises, such a fine can play a limited role.

Ma Jun said that there were extreme cases in the survey. A company estimated that the monthly penalty would not exceed 100 thousand yuan, and it would simply pay 1 million 200 thousand yuan in the annual budget, which was presupposed as an environmental penalty.

"The attitude of enterprises is that penalties are imposed on penalties. Some large textile enterprises can waste more than one hundred thousand yuan a day, and the cost of illegal activities is much lower than the cost of law-abiding."

It is not simply a "blacklist".

Although there are many environmental violations of suppliers of some famous brand clothing, most brand clothing companies do not regard the upstream supply chain as their responsibility.

In the survey, the public environmental research center found that some suspected suppliers of ZARA had environmental problems, including complaints by local people, some of the production wastewater being directly discharged without treatment, and casualties caused by the clearance of waste water tanks.

After the research team issued a reminder letter about its suspected supplier Environmental Violation in China, the reply from ZARA wrote: "unfortunately, we can not answer individual responses from our schools, universities and professionals to our business model."

"The problem of these suspected suppliers of ZARA is the reality, and ZARA, as one of the world's largest fashion retail companies, openly stated on its official website that it is" sincere to establish contacts with a wide range of stakeholders and society, continue to dialogue with the stakeholders and social organizations mentioned earlier, and the overall business activities need to be pparent ". We think ZARA is against its public commitments.

Ma Jun said.

Different from ZARA, Nike, H&M, Levi's, Adidas and other brand enterprises have begun to investigate suppliers' violation situation after receiving the letter of environmental protection organization, and consider establishing supplier search system.

In a reply, Nike said: "Nike will ask its supply chain partners in China to pay close attention to their environmental behavior and, if necessary, announce the rectification plan."

In reply, Adidas said: "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.

Li Li said that the purpose of this survey is not simply to list a "black list" of textile enterprises, but rather to make use of public information to identify the violation of the supply chain actively and effectively, and establish a regular retrieval mechanism to promote the rectification and improvement of information disclosure by the brand clothing enterprises.

"When environmental management goes along the supply chain level to the raw material production link, brand enterprises will be able to truly realize the pollution control of the textile product life cycle.

The resulting chain reaction will provide a strong impetus for China's pollution control. "

Li Li said.