Fashion may pride itself in keeping up with the times and this includes “green” fashion trends, but the textile manufacturing industry is one of the most polluting industries in the world. This is due to the effort that goes into producing cotton and synthetic fabrics but also because of the antiquated manufacturing techniques that are used to dye and finish fabric. In pursuit of the global effort to limit environmental damage, Global Organic Textile Standards (GOTS) is a certification process for every stage of textile manufacture including the ways in which chemicals and water are used and is the result of seven years of concerted effort.
China, which produces about 50 percent of the textiles such as dresses used in the US, creates 3 billion tons of soot every year and also wastes millions of tons of fabric rejected by buyers by either incinerating them or dumping them in landfills. A mill can use up to 200 tons of water for dyeing every ton of fabric and the rivers into which their waste is dumped are full of untreated toxic chemicals. Perhaps 1000 of China’s 50,000 textile mills are equipped with sensors that monitor the use of heat, water and chemicals and can provide demanding clients with reports on their environmental performance.
Despite the bottom line advantages of using environmentally friendly manufacturing methods, what else is required to get the other 49,000 of China’s textile mills to fall in line? NRDC has an initiative called Clean by Design, which encourages brands and retailers to include environmental factors to other factors such as costs and quality when they make their buying decisions. Big players in the apparel industry who have joined this initiative include Wal-Mart, GAP, Levi Strauss & Co and Nike.
If these giant companies as well as other big buyers could create criteria to qualify their suppliers on environmental considerations and create preferred suppliers only when these criteria are met, the whole textile manufacturing industry could be forced into a much greener environment. Surely, business considerations would then force the entire Chinese textile industry to be far more eco-friendly than it has hitherto been.
