Textile retailers in China face pollution scandals
- By Wu Jin
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E-mail China.org.cn, October 10, 2012
Five Chinese environmental protection organizations, including Friends of Nature, the Institute for Public and Environmental Affairs and Nanjing Greenstone, have recently exposed the disqualification of 47 textile producers regarding their pollution control standards.
47 out of a total 49 selected companies were found to be in violation of Chinese laws and regulations by causing a pollution overload, according to a report revealed by the five abovementioned organizations in Beijing, Oct. 18.
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The water is heavily tainted by the waste from the sewerage of neighboring textile manufacturers. [Chinadialogue.net] |
19 of the world's most famous textile retailers such as Giorgio Armani, Calvin Klein, Carrefour and Disney, have ignored the organizations’ questionings and offered no explanation for the alleged infringements.
The investigation, initiated in April 2012, basically checked up on 49 textile corporations in regards to their suppliers’ performances in the field of environmental protection.
The organizations had to call upon all firms not once, but twice before receiving 30 responses by October 7.
According to Ma Jun, director of the Institute for Public and Environmental Affairs, 17 out of the 30 interviewees, including H&M, Adidas and Gap, showed their willingness to cooperate by simply answering the questions. The others, such as Zara, Uniqlo and Puma, were lukewarm to icy cold in their reactions.
Amid the loose juridical execution, weak environmental monitoring system and tough prosecution proceeding, the textile companies lack interest in pollution control and even a cavalier disregard for the environmental protection standards that are regulated by law. Their attitude of complete disregard has consequently led to a massive sewage leakage into neighboring water resources.
The organization takes Marks and Spencer, one of Britain’s best-known retailers, as an example. Under the company’s seemingly eco-friendly concepts-mainly those of "zero-waste" and "carbon-neutral" production- its suppliers, such as Zhejiang Qingmao Textile Dying Co. Ltd., keep gushing out the stinky sewage and gas despite protests from neighboring communities.
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One of the Marks and Spencer's flagship stores in Shanghai. [Chinasspp.com] |
Qingmao’s negligence in regards to its huge polluted waste deposit has long been protested against by local residents since its launch in October 2003. However, the pollution problem is deteriorating rather than being improved, let alone solved. In March 2010, a malfunction of the company’s sewage pool, killed the working bacterium and resulted in a massive leak of polluted waste.
Facing infuriated residents, the local Shaoxing Environmental Protection Bureau asked the company to take instant measures in overhauling its pollution control system. However, the order proved pointless as the polluted emissions never ceased to suffer from random outbreaks.
And Qingmao is by no means a single story among Marks and Spencer's material suppliers. Many of them have had their name tainted over the heavy pollution haunting adjacent communities.
Marks and Spencer always speaks very highly of its eco-concept, but only to let their suppliers loosely supervise the specific environmental protection measures, the organizations disclosed.
According to the organizations, China is bound to remain a major manufacturer for textile materials all over the world for a long time to come. It is therefore almost certain that the shockingly slacking mechanisms regarding pollution control will lead the disordered textile processing industries to cause an escalation of the pollution of water and other natural resources.
What’s more, the impact of this pollution overload is set to linger on even if the industrial chain does manage to fully transform itself in cooperation with the textile processing manufacturers.
The organizations called for the creation of an enhanced monitoring system on a national level as well as one specifically targeting the big corporations who actually run the show behind the scenes.
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