Nike And Other 46 Clothing Brand Supply Chain "Poisoning"

"Pollution behind fashion" once again triggered concern for environmental NGO.

Following the report of the international NG0 Green Peace released in 2011, the report of China's water pollution investigation of the fashion poison global clothing brand, second reports on water pollution in the textile industry in China, namely, the choice of textile pollution pollution brand for fashion cleaning and green selection (hereinafter referred to as "textile supply chain pollution"), was released in the afternoon of April 9th.

This newspaper learned that the pollution of textile supply chain was released by the 5 green organizations, including friends of nature, public environmental research center, Dahl, circle friend technology and Nanjing green stone. The report indicates that there are serious environmental violations in the supply chain of a large number of textile brands and clothing retailers including ZARA, GAP, LEVI, "S, HUGO" and so on, which have a serious impact on China's water environment.

"A large number of textile enterprises exceed the standard violation."

Ma Jun, director of the public environment research center, told our reporter that as of February 20, 2012, there were more than 6000 records of textile enterprises recorded in the China pollution map database.

An official of the Ministry of environmental protection disclosed to this newspaper that during the "12th Five-Year" period, the Ministry of environmental protection will control the total amount of pollutants in the printing and dyeing industry of the textile industry.

The annual effluent of the textile industry is about 25 billion tons.

Textile industry has become one of the main sources of water pollution in China at the same time that China has become the world's textile factory.

According to the statistics of China Textile Industry Association, in 2010, the total fiber processing in China's textile industry amounted to 41 million 300 thousand tons, accounting for 52%-54% of the world total; the total export volume of textiles and clothing in China amounted to 212 billion US dollars in the whole year, accounting for 34% of the world's total exports.

China Environmental Statistics Annual Report (2010) shows that in 2010, the textile wastewater discharge amounted to 24.55 million tons, accounting for third of the 39 industrial sectors in the current statistics, accounting for 11.6% of the total wastewater discharge from key survey and statistics enterprises.

Among them, the COD emission is about 300 thousand and 600 tons, the pollution contribution rate is 8.2%, and the ammonia nitrogen emission is 17 thousand and 400 tons, accounting for 7.1% of the ammonia nitrogen emissions from the key survey and statistics enterprises.

Ma Jun introduced, in the textile industry, dyeing and finishing (dyeing and processing) waste water accounted for more than 80%, chemical fiber production waste water accounted for about 12%, the other 8% of the textile wastewater (2004 industry estimated data), "from the region, Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Shandong, Guangdong and Fujian, the total amount of dyeing and finishing waste water accounted for 90% of the total amount of waste water emissions in the country."

"The textile industry not only has large emissions, but also has low efficiency in water use."

Textile supply chain pollution points out.

According to the report on prevention and control of industrial pollution in key industries in 2008, the average content of pollutants in China's printing and dyeing wastewater is 2-3 times that of abroad, and the water consumption is as high as 3-4 times. At the same time, printing and dyeing wastewater is not only the main pollutant in the industry, but also the sludge produced by printing and dyeing waste water has some problems.

In response, Wu Xianfeng, director of the environmental protection department's total quantity division, has openly analyzed the reasons, which is related to the backward production process adopted by our printing and dyeing enterprises.

Most printing and dyeing enterprises in China, especially small and medium-sized enterprises, are in the early 1980s. The energy and resources consumption is several times higher than that of the developed countries in terms of unit products. For example, the amount of water used for printing and dyeing tons of tonnes of advanced countries is about 100 tons, while China generally has 300-400 tons.

"Most of the printing and dyeing enterprises used the single stage aerobic treatment process, although some pollutants were removed, but a large number of toxic and harmful substances (such as cyanide, etc.) were discharged into rivers and lakes, causing pollution to the water body."

Wu Xianfeng pointed out that, because of the low water resources (average 0.05 yuan / cubic meter), the average reuse rate of water was only 7%, which aggravated the shortage of water resources in China and increased the difficulty of pollution control.

46 brand supply chain violations

"Even if the textile industry meets the standards, the pressure on the environment is still great, because the water consumption is huge."

Ma Jun pointed out that "in the survey found that many textile enterprises have environmental violations records, and even fail to achieve stable discharge standards."

"Textile supply chain pollution" pointed out that in China's pollution map database business monitoring records input, "textile", "printing and dyeing", "dyeing and finishing", "printing" and other keywords, you can search more than 6000 records. These records include private hidden pipes, untreated straight pollutants, abnormal use of sewage treatment facilities, exceeding the standard total discharge of pollutants, unauthorized use of the sealed production facilities, due to environmental problems are listed and supervised.

"Among the enterprises that violate the regulations, a number of textile enterprises are part of the supply chain of international and domestic brands."

Ma Jun told this newspaper, "these brands include both brands, including large retailers at home and abroad. Among the 48 well-known brands we have investigated, there are 46 brands of supply chain with irregular emissions problems."

Specifically, there are 46 well-known brands in the supply chain which are illegal. They include famous brands both at home and abroad, such as Nike, H&M, Levi, s, Adidas, Burberry Esprit, Calvin Klein, Armani, Anta, YOUNGOR, etc., including retailers such as Tesco, WAL-MART, Carrefour, Messi general store and Taghit.

"The companies that have not found problems for the time being are Burberry and Yida and they have used our pollution map database very early to supervise their suppliers and urge them to rectify the problem after they find out the problem."

Ma Jun said.

After sorting out the supply relationship between the textile products manufacturers and the well-known brands, the research team sent letters to CEO of 48 Enterprises on March 22, 2012, 26 and 29, hoping that it could check and confirm the green products, and promote the improvement of suppliers through green procurement.

"Textile supply chain pollution" revealed the results of the enterprise response. 16 companies responded to the reminder letter of the research group, and the 32 enterprises did not respond. The latter included Marks and Spencer, Esprit, Calvin Klein, Armani, Carrefour and other international brands, including 360 degrees, Anta, YOUNGOR and other well-known domestic brands.

In this regard, Ma Jun analysis, the brand can not respond may also be due to objective factors, such as limited time to reply, internal information pmission process, language and supplier name confusion, "but we understand these difficulties, and expect the brand to finally respond and take action.

We will continue to observe this, and our online page will dynamically evaluate the supply chain management of the brand. "

Ma further pointed out that some brands did not respond because of their conflict with social supervision.

In the investigation, the research group saw some environmental problems of suspected suppliers of Zara, including complaints by local people, and some of the production wastewater was directly discharged without treatment. It was rated as one of the typical local environmental violations, and many people died due to the clearance of the waste water tank.

"In the course of the survey, we received a reply from ZARA, which wrote:" unfortunately, we can not answer individual responses from our schools, universities and professionals to our business model. "

"Textile supply chain pollution" said.

Raise water price and pry?

Compared with the pollution status, the control effect is not optimistic.

According to our newspaper, the Ministry of environmental protection intends to control the total amount of pollutants in the printing and dyeing industry of the textile industry.

"The Ministry of environmental protection has not yet made a clear plan for the specific control."

An expert close to the Ministry of environmental protection is very difficult to implement this newspaper analysis. Who will execute it?

"According to the plan of the Ministry of environmental protection, the Ministry of environmental protection intends to implement total pollutant control in four industries: electricity, iron and steel, printing and dyeing and paper making."

Aforementioned experts pointed out that electricity and steel are relatively easy, mostly central enterprises, and their emission reduction is mainly focused on the Ministry of environmental protection and the SASAC.

But printing and dyeing are different, many of them are small and medium-sized enterprises, no matter whether they are sent to industry associations or local governments.

According to the expert analysis, it is not enough to rely solely on government regulation, and some environmental and economic policies can be adopted.

"Specifically, at the front end, raising the water price of industrial water will give the textile industry a clear signal that the price of water resources will rise for a long time, thereby enhancing the power of its efficient water conservation". "At the end, we will stimulate enterprises to actively reduce emissions by raising the COD and ammonia nitrogen pollutants discharge standards."

Besides the environmental protection department, the pollution problem of the textile industry also needs the participation of the business department.

"Textile industry is a highly energy consuming and highly polluting industry. A large part of its products are exported to foreign countries. It belongs to the typical export of products and the type of pollution left in the domestic market. It is suggested that the commerce department should appropriately restrict the export of textiles, such as higher export tariffs."

An environmental and trade expert from the Ministry of environmental protection analyzed this newspaper.

At the same time, Ma Jun appealed that "environmental protection departments should further expand environmental information disclosure, comprehensively, timely and completely release environmental supervision records of textile enterprises to the public, and at the same time push enterprises to publish data on their emissions and consumption of resources so as to enhance public supervision of enterprises."

In addition, considering that the supply chain is becoming more and more difficult with the extension of the supply chain, the textile supply chain pollution proposal suggests that when undertaking the retrieval of the first level suppliers with the commitment of using the open government supervision data, the brand requires the suppliers at the same level to make the same commitment, that is, the first level suppliers are required to use the government regulatory data to retrieve their own first-class suppliers.

Such an arrangement will help the brand overcome the contradiction between diminishing influence and increasing risk of pollution when the environmental management extends along the supply chain.