Fourteen Well-Known Clothing Brands Are Exposed To Pollution Doors, And China'S Pollution Standards Are Missing.

Reporters recently learned at the Sohu Green Seminar, including Adidas,

Greenpeace calls 14 garments

After green field sampling and sending samples to Greenpeace Research Laboratory at Exeter University and an independent environmental analysis laboratory in Holland, a survey of China's water pollution was launched in July 13th, which is called "fashion poison: the global clothing brand." it is said that 14 global clothing brands have not been able to effectively solve the toxic and hazardous substances emitted by their suppliers.

The two suppliers are YOUNGOR textile industrial city located in the Yangtze River Delta and Zhongshan Guotai dyeing and finishing Co., Ltd. in the Pearl River Delta.

The report said that the two suppliers discharged toxic substances to the Yangtze River Delta and the Pearl River Delta respectively. They found alkylphenols, including nonylphenol (NP), from YOUNGOR in two factories.

Founded in 1979, YOUNGOR group is China's largest vertical industry chain integrated textile company, with world-class textile production, garment manufacturing and retail capabilities.

The company is located in Ningbo, Zhejiang, China's eastern part, and is adjacent to Shanghai.

The Cathay dyeing and finishing company, located in Zhongshan, Guangdong, is also a well-known company in the industry.

The two companies provide raw materials for garment enterprises including 14 well-known clothing brands, and are currently the two largest suppliers.

Therefore, the green peace report has an unprecedented impact on China's garment industry.

It is understood that about 25% of the world's compounds are used in the textile industry.

The wet process of textile production, including dyeing, cleaning, printing and fabric finishing, will produce a large number of wastewater containing toxic and harmful substances.

As long as there are toxic and harmful substances in the wastewater, even if the content is small, it is impossible to completely remove them through the sewage treatment plant.

These toxic and harmful substances will affect the content of hormones in the human body, or directly stimulate and inhibit the endocrine system, make endocrine system disorders, thereby impeding the reproductive, development and other functions, and even lead to malignant tumor and biological extinction.

Inconsistent standards make sense.

According to a reporter's investigation, after the report came out, the two suppliers both denied the sewage.

Cathay Pacific dyeing and finishing said there were loopholes in the selection of Greenpeace samples.

Zhongshan Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau Triangle Town Branch responsible person said that by the end of June this year, the Guangdong provincial environmental protection department and Zhongshan EPA inspected Cathay Pacific dyeing and finishing facilities for environmental protection and operation, and found no exception in the company's sewage treatment.

They said that after treatment, the effluent quality indicators of the company can meet the requirements of Guangdong's "water pollutant discharge limits".

Zhang Xiaoyan, chief executive of Li Ning Co, said that Cathay Pacific dyeing and finishing is only one of the suppliers of Lining knitted fabrics. They have issued a test report from the local environmental protection inspection station, and the emission is qualified.

YOUNGOR said the content of the report was inconsistent with the facts. YOUNGOR hired an independent international third party testing agency to detect the sewage. The test report showed "normal".

According to the official statement of YOUNGOR Textile City, they refer to the European standard of Oeko-Tex 100 for the upstream dyestuff materials, while also using the AAFA RSL restricted substances list and the European REACH regulations.

Adidas argues that its tailoring and sewing are only what the YOUNGOR textile industrial city does.

Nike also responded that it only made tailoring and sewing processes in the supplier factories of YOUNGOR Textile City, not including chemicals.

Brands like Bauer Hockey, Converse, Cortefiel, H&M and Puma also say that their clothing has not been wet treated in YOUNGOR textile industrial city.

For these statements, Greenpeace Li Fang said that YOUNGOR had hired another testing body, namely SGS.

However, the SGS test showed that the PFOA value of the pollutants measured was 0.36 milligrams per liter, which was greater than 0.13 to 0.14 mg per liter in the Greenpeace report. YOUNGOR did not specify this.

Importantly, the testing agency did not detect PFOS and NP.

For the reasons not detected, the lowest limit of SGS detection is 0.5 milligrams per litre, taking NP value as an example. The NP concentration in water will be detected above this amount, while the minimum limit of Greenpeace is 14 micrograms per litre.

Some experts said that the standard of "Cathay Pacific dyeing and finishing sewage discharge" is the standard of Guangdong province.

Although YOUNGOR has hired SGS for testing, its standard of detecting NP and PFOS is much lower than that of Greenpeace.

YOUNGOR is referring to the European Oeko-Tex 100 standard.

However, Oeko-Tex 100 is for product certification, not for production processes and emission standards.

The washing process will be used in the process of textile production. It will remove toxic and harmful substances from textile supernatants. These toxic and harmful substances may enter industrial wastewater discharged by enterprises.

Moreover, Oeko-Tex 100 will not detect all the toxic and harmful substances in textiles. The Greenpeace discovered PFOS and PFOA were included in Oeko-Tex 100 last year. At present, Oeko-Tex 100 will only detect textiles with waterproof and oil resistant layers.

Many experts interviewed by reporters think that it is precisely because of the different standards that both sides feel that they are justified.

The PFOS and NP, which are considered to be qualified and meet the criteria of Guangdong, are not detected. This shows that our standards need to be improved.

As a matter of fact, our country has not yet established a stricter and unified standard for pollutant discharge in garment production.

Experts believe that China's emission standards should be formulated as soon as possible.

At the Sohu Green Seminar, Ding Qiong, an environmental protection cooperation center of the Ministry of environmental protection, said that China is a contracting party to the Stockholm Convention on persistent organic pollutants. The PFOS mentioned in the green peace report is one of the 9 new pollutants that were included in the Stockholm convention in 2010.

Their testing standards have met the requirements of the Convention. China is now stepping up efforts to study and formulate laws and regulations, and gradually restrict, reduce and eliminate the use of PFOS.

Lin Zi Xin, the procurement project Commissioner of the NRDC, highly commended the monitoring of Greenpeace.

She said that throughout the entire textile dyeing and finishing industry, there are widespread problems such as the use of toxic and harmful chemicals. These two suppliers are only the tip of the iceberg.

Friends of Greenpeace have done a lot of work and done a lot of research.

More of them want to call on people to pay attention to the problems in the industry.

In this respect, this has contributed to the overall greening of the industry.

Zhang Mei, senior engineer of the China dyeing and printing industry association, said that the three chemicals mentioned in the Greenpeace report are all ingredients used in the textile and dyeing industry. At present, they do not enter China's basic safety technical specification for national textile products (GB18401-2003). Therefore, they are not strictly restricted. PFOS is restricted in import and export and needs to be detected.

For the printing and dyeing industry association, once the state has included NP, PFOS and PFOA in the mandatory standards of industry, it will supervise and guide enterprises to improve the technological process and choose additives that do not contain toxic and harmful substances.

The actual situation is that most of the dyeing and finishing factories are weak in environmental protection. If we want to optimize the management of dyeing auxiliaries, there are many practical problems. First of all, the technical team must cooperate with many departments to make industrial improvements step by step. Secondly, since the country does not have more stringent requirements, it is difficult for the factory to make improvements unilaterally.

As a factory, there is no ability to detect any chemicals in each dyestuff.

Some experts suggested that China has just included NP in the list of "strictly restricting import and export of toxic chemicals" from this year. There are no other regulatory measures, and the developed countries such as the EU have already controlled these substances and eliminated them from the source.

Therefore, we urgently need to introduce a practical, consistent with the requirements of the Convention and close to the international standard of industrial standards. We need a clear list of chemical substances restriction and relevant legal supervision. Manufacturers of dyes and chemicals must standardize and declare relevant substances, and buyers should also make corresponding requirements.

Although this has increased the burden on clothing manufacturers, in the long run, it is worthwhile to pay a certain price from the perspective of personal health and environmental protection.