Cleaning Up Chinese Textile Factories -- and the Clothes You Wear
Born into an ordinary peasant family in Changshu, China, Liu Guozhong began making clothes for a living at age 13. By 19, he had started his own fabric business in Shanghai, eventually moving on to become the founder of the Jiangsu Redbud Textile Company. His business dyes cotton fabric for major American retailers and boasts annual sales of about $40 million.
Redbud piled up awards and accolades locally, including “Jiangsu Province Faithful and Credit Enterprise,” “China Culture Construction Well-known Enterprise of Textile Industry,” and “National Advanced Rural Enterprise of Exportation Bringing in Foreign Exchange Income.” But it was also second-worst in a public ranking system for environmental compliance.
That’s when its client Walmart came knocking, concerned about the company’s environmental record, and Liu put Redbud on course to achieve a dramatic turnaround. With a $72,000 investment in efficiency, Redbud slashed its water and coal use, raised its compliance ranking to second best, and is now racking up savings of about $70,000 a month to boot.
Spurred in part by Redbud’s success, some of the biggest names in the clothing business are joining a global initiative to clean up the textile industry. An official announcement regarding some major-league participation in Clean by Design, an initiative spearheaded by NRDC and the Council of Fashion Designers of America, is expected next week. (See update at bottom.) The companies will urge suppliers like Liu to adopt a series of water- and energy-saving measures that slash pollution and save money.
Half of the clothing that Americans buy is made in China, where textile-making is one of the most polluting industries in the world and the number-one source of water pollution. The Chinese textile industry creates about 3 billion tons of soot each year, and a single mill can use about 200 tons of water for each ton of fabric it dyes. Millions of tons of unused fabric are burned or sent to landfills each year when dyed the wrong color. Rivers run red -- or chartreuse, or teal, depending on what color is in fashion that season -- with untreated toxic dyes washing off from mills.
“It’s an old-fashioned industry, and a lot of modern techniques haven’t been adopted yet,” says Linda Greer, an NRDC scientist who works on reducing pollution in China.
Since 2007, Greer and her team have been examining Chinese textile mills in an effort to stem pollution. They have pinpointed 10 simple, cost-effective fixes -- such as repairing leaky pipes, adding insulation and reusing water -- which will make textile mills vastly more efficient.
Redbud implemented just three water-saving techniques -- capturing cooling water, collecting steam condensate from dryers, and reusing water from chemical baths -- to save 738 tons of water (23 percent of its total water use) and 9.4 tons of coal (11 percent of its coal use) every day, in addition to reducing its chemical load. The company recouped the cost of its investment in just 32 days and racks up an annual savings of $840,000.
In the past, only niche brands such as Loomstate, which built its name on sustainability, would ask questions about a supplier’s environmental performance. Today, however, Loomstate’s way of doing business is making a lot of sense to bigger companies.
“We’re not doing anything that’s so different -- we’re in business like anyone else,” explains Loomstate cofounder Scott MacKinlay Hahn. “Fundamentally, everyone’s looking for better pricing from suppliers. What I believe is that by measuring and helping factories be more efficient, they’re in a position to respectfully and honorably reduce costs. Then the pricing isn’t coming from a cost to the community, it’s a true savings.”
Hahn serves as an advisor to NRDC’s Clean by Design initiative, which helped guide Redbud’s improvements and encourages brands and retailers to consider environmental criteria, not just quality and cost, when they make purchasing decisions. Wal-Mart, GAP, Levi Strauss & Co., Nike, H&M and other big players in the apparel industry are participating in the initiative.
“Sourcing directors for the mass market players are starting to have some of the same conversations that we’re having with our suppliers,” says Hahn. “When we first started in 2004, this wasn’t common. Now it’s becoming the price of entry for running a successful business.”
UPDATE 9/22/10: NRDC announced today that Walmart and H&M have made major commitments to the Clean by Design initiative. See the press announcement or read NRDC President Frances Beinecke's blog post about its significance.
