Promoting The Decontamination Of The Entire Textile Supply Chain Through The Leading Brand At The Forefront Of The Industry Chain

Following the cleanup of IT industry last year, in October 8th, the green choice alliance composed of 42 domestic environmental organizations was launched.

"Elimination of poison" action.

Environmental protection organizations hope that consumers can choose the green choice consumption of the most front-end big brands or retailers, and ultimately push the decontamination of the entire textile supply chain.

At present, 17 of the nearly 50 Chinese and foreign textile brands have made positive responses. However, there are 10 reactions which are dull, and 22 others are indifferent.

"We choose to communicate directly with the big brands of these fast moving consumer goods because they are usually more sensitive to consumers' reactions."

The IPE, the head of the public research center, said that the green choice alliance will target the domestic textile industry because it has always been a big pollute and has contributed to China's increasingly serious water pollution to the top three.

"The reaction force of large brands or retailers at the front end of textiles may directly promote decontamination of the entire textile supply chain."

"After all, consumers vote with feet is the most powerful," Ma said.

Behind the 6000 pollution records in the textile industry

Colorful clothing has always been a symbol of fashion and Avantgarde, but

The serious environmental pollution caused by the process of cloth dyeing and finishing is rarely known.

The water pollution map compiled by the public research center in Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Fujian, Guangdong and Shandong is concentrated in five provinces, many of which are produced by the textile industry.

Of the more than 97000 black environmental information collected by the water pollution map, more than 6000 came from the textile industry, accounting for nearly 62%.

"It is not the industry that we are painstakingly looking for, which is the most polluted and should be improved. It is itself jumping out."

Ma Jun, a long-term operator who studies China's water pollution map, is quite sensitive to water pollution data.

Chinese textiles

Taking up more than 30% of the global market, the textile industry has also become one of the largest sources of water pollution in China.

The publicly available data show that dyeing and finishing wastewater accounts for more than 80% of the total waste volume in the textile industry, while the dyeing and finishing wastewater produced by the five provinces of Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Guangdong, Fujian and Shandong, which is the textile industry, accounts for more than 90% of the country's total.

Since the second half of this year, with the closure of Adidas's only self-produced factory in China, the voice of the world manufacturing center pferred from China to Southeast Asia and even Africa has always existed.

Environmental protection NGO found that in the textile industry, the real pfer of China is the garment making link, and the heavily polluted dyeing and finishing link will remain in China for a long time.

"Because dyeing and finishing links belong to capital intensive investment, the general fixed assets investment is large, and it will not be adjusted easily, but the garment making links are labor-intensive industries, and China's advantage is gradually being replaced by Southeast Asia."

Ma Jun believes that the current division of the world's economic division of labor, obviously, China's water environment is still facing great challenges.

China environmental statistics annual report has statistics: in 2010, in the survey of 39 industrial wastewater discharge in China, the annual wastewater discharge in textile industry reached 24.55 billion tons, third in the industry, and huge amount of industrial wastewater discharge.

Large amounts of ammonia nitrogen and COD (chemical oxygen demand) carried in textile waste water cause natural water pollution.

Environmental protection organizations such as the public research center, friends of nature and Dahl asked the natural knowledge society, etc., in textile pollution records, a large number of "black list" textile enterprises are downstream suppliers of well-known brands or retailers.

Such as GUESS, POLO, MARKS&SPEN CER (Martha group) and other well-known brands of fabric supply Zhejiang Qingfeng textile printing and dyeing company, as well as Nike, Reebok, GAP and other brand suppliers - Futian industries (Group) Co., Ltd.

Challenge Martha group's environmental A plan

"Can we tap the supply chain decontamination through the big brands or retailers at the forefront of the industrial chain?" by the end of March this year, the green choice alliance began to communicate with Chinese and foreign well-known brands or retailers.

"Through the preliminary research, we combed the supply relationship between the environment beyond the standard, the illegal textile manufacturers and the well-known brands, and then sent letters to the C E O of these big brands."

Public research center staff said mail communication is often the first step for NGO to get out.

In the mail, N G O first clarified the original intention of environmental protection organizations to pay attention to the performance of the enterprise environment, listed the list of suspected suppliers with environmental violations, and asked relevant brands or retailers to help check and confirm, hoping that they could promote suppliers to improve their environmental performance through green procurement.

Communication is tough.

Although Nike, Yida, WAL-MART, H&M, Levi, s, Adidas, Burberry and a few other large brands began to respond positively, inquiring and promoting the solution of the supplier's environmental violations, but the overwhelming majority of the brands responded to the N G O mail coolly, or their customers were perfunctory or simply ignored.

A big brand even replied arrogantly: we can't answer questions from our schools, universities and professionals about our business models.

Even the British brand Marks & Spencer (Martha department store), which has always been a high-profile commitment in the field of environmental protection, has made NGO surprise.

Martha's department store, a century old, is the largest multinational business retail group in the UK. It has opened 1100 branches in 40 countries and regions around the world.

In 2007, Martha's Department launched its 100 commitment A program, making it the most dazzling green star among global retailers.

These commitments relate to many environmental problems, such as environmental protection, social welfare and animal welfare, which may be faced by retailers.

In June this year, Martha group said publicly that the A plan was successfully implemented, and it has become "the first large retailer to achieve carbon neutralization" in the world, and "one hundred percent recycling waste".

NGO found that two printing and dyeing companies located in Zhejiang, Zhejiang Qingmao textile printing and dyeing company and Qingfeng textile printing and dyeing company, are two grade suppliers of Martha department store in China, and there are repeated environmental violations.

After repeated communication with Martha group, NGO replied: "(reflecting problems) may be solved."

Is Martha going to improve his supplier? Ambiguous reply makes Ma Jun confused.

In September this year, the green choice alliance and local environmental protection organizations in Zhejiang jointly conducted a field investigation of their suspected supplier's environmental behavior.

In Zhejiang, Zhejiang, Zhejiang, Shaoxing, the local environmental protection organization Wenzhou green eyes learned that since the commissioning of the plant in 2003, the factory has repeatedly suffered from pollution incidents and has been repeatedly complained by local villagers.

In the Tang Dynasty Village, Doumen Town, which is separated from the river by printing and dyeing company, the villagers point to the chimney which is being emitted from the factory area. It is called "smelly taste every day". "When the flavor is heavy, there will be nosebleeds and dizziness in children."

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Another Qingfeng textile printing and dyeing company located in Xiaoshan Economic Development Zone, Hangzhou, has been playing yellow card or red card since three years in 2009.

A municipal worker who has been cleaning the river for many years said that once the water level of the river dropped, it would be seen that Qingfeng was directly discharged into the big pipe of Hei Shui River, and when it was large enough, it could see the water coming out of it.

The problem of producing sour and stinky gases from factories that cause headache and nausea to local residents has not yet been solved.

"As a major clothing retailer in the world, Martha stores did not have strict management of dyeing and finishing suppliers."

Ma Jun made the judgement.

"The brand business failed to respond in time, may also be limited by objective conditions, such as the limited response time, the internal information pfer process and so on."

Green choice alliance staff said they never gave up and had been dynamically assessing the supply chain management of relevant brands on the Internet, urging the other side to respond.

The dawn of "green procurement"

By the end of October, the gap in the green choice alliance's communication feedback list was gradually decreasing.

The active brand of large brands or retailers increased to 17, and prompted the domestic 222 textile industry suppliers to communicate with NGO, of which 33 also carried out the third party audit of environmental rectification.

Adidas is one of the first brands to extend environmental management to material suppliers, and to promote suppliers to solve the problem of environmental pollution.

Located in Zhongshan, Guangdong, Zhongshan Guotai dyeing and finishing Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Cathay dyeing and finishing") is one of Adidas's material suppliers.

Like most printing and dyeing enterprises, since its establishment in 2001, there have been repeated environmental violations, including excessive discharge of sewage and red card of environmental credit rating.

Adidas has issued an ultimatum: whether the record of environmental violations can be successfully removed will directly affect the third quarter of 2012.

At the end of 2011, China and Thailand dyeing and finishing actively called the public research center, indicating that the environmental bad records of 2004, 2005 and 2006 were explained on the request of Adidas.

Under the joint promotion of brand dealers and environmental protection NGO, Cathay Pacific dyeing and finishing has completed the two phase pformation of its sewage treatment plant, and its daily sewage treatment capacity reached 41000 tons, nearly 7 times that before the pformation.

In addition, Guangdong Yida group, WAL-MART, Nike, H&M, Gap and other brands also responded positively to the green choice alliance.

"The subcontracting behavior of garment production process is very common. At present, most brands can only manage their own first-class suppliers, and suppliers are also multi supplier. The supply chain cleaning mode is still facing challenges."

Ma Jun does not avoid this. "We hope that the government can manage the supply chain management of textile industry beyond government management."

In April last year, the public environment research center received a report that Kay DAE textile (Suzhou) Company (hereinafter referred to as "Kaida") had been stealing and dyeing printing and dyeing wastewater and seriously polluted the surrounding environment.

IPE's pollution database has also recorded environmental violation records for many times. IPE immediately communicated with N Ike, and N Ike clearly indicated that it would promote Kaida rectification.

In May of this year, Kai Tai received the third party environmental supervision agency entrusted by N Ike.

The original problem of sewage leakage has been resolved, but Kaida textile has no further improvement commitment to the requirements of the third party's "further enhancing its sewage treatment capacity" and "cleaning up the polluted river bed".

In the end, it failed to pass the third party environmental rectification audit, and N Ike stopped purchasing raw materials from it.

"Usually a printing and dyeing enterprise wants to supply many brands, and the east does not brighten the West." it always has new choices.

The green select alliance has collected data to show that Kay textile is also supplying Puma, Anta and Disney brands, but the three brands have not made any promotion and explanation to the problem of pollution.

"To cope with the serious pollution in the upstream of the textile supply chain, it is hard to rely on only a few responsible brand dealers or retailers. What we need more is a change in the industry."

Ma Jun said that in the current situation of the domestic dyeing and finishing industry's external environmental supervision is weak, the water price of the industry is seriously low, and the non-governmental organizations' public interest litigation is difficult. Next, he hopes that more consumers will make a choice. "Every choice will be to clean up the fashion industry."