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New Research For Textile Waste
2019/09/27
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In a Hong Kong laboratory, researchers are working with one of the world’s biggest cloth makers to improve its production process using a special ingredient: bacteria. TAL has teamed up with City University to identify bacteria that can clean up more efficiently the vast quantities of waste water the textile industry produces. It’s one of hundreds of efforts by China’s private and state-owned companies to fix a problem that could end up rewriting the playbook of the global fashion industry.
After decades of almost unbridled industrial growth that left China with a legacy of rampant pollution, shrinking aquifers and soaring water prices, the government is cracking down on big industrial users, and the textile industry is in the front line. Cloth-making ranks third in China for the amount of waste water it discharges – 3 billion tons a year – after chemicals and paper, according to a 2015 report by New York-based nonprofit group Natural Resources Defense Council, which has an office in Beijing.
The price of ensuring a sustainable water supply in China is yet another expense for factories that are already being squeezed by higher land and labor costs. And while automation and overseas production offer some respite, China’s companies are turning to other technologies to preserve operating margins that ,can be less than 10 percent.
The clean-up goes to the heart of an industry that leveraged decades of cheap labor and capital, and a unique close-knit supply chain of cloth, dyeing, sewing, fasteners, trimmings, labels and logistics, to deliver so-called fast fashion – rapidly shifting style from the catwalk to the mass market at prices that make garments almost a disposable commodity. “Customers are happy because clothes are even cheaper than a decade ago, and retailers can benefit from low costs,” said Felix Chung, a Hong Kong legislator representing the textile industry. “But the result is massive waste – and the brands will need to pay for it in the future.”
With that model coming under fire for its environmental record, top brands like H&M Hennes & Mauritz AB, Target Corp and Gap Inc have adopted water quality standards for their suppliers and monitor them to protect their reputation with consumers. Owners of brands including H&M, Zara, Nike and Adidas are among those that have committed to achieve zero discharge of hazardous chemicals in production by 2020. The problem is how to achieve better environment and labor standards without raising prices for consumers who have become addicted to cheap fashion.
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