NRDC’s Ten Best Practices for Textile Mills to Save Money and Reduce Pollution

Textile manufacturing has a huge environmental footprint, polluting as much as 200 tons of water per ton of fabric with a suite of harmful chemicals, and consuming tremendous amounts of  energy for steam and hot water. That the industry is now centered in countries with still-developing environmental regulatory systems such as China, India, Vietnam, and Bangladesh only compounds the problem. To address the rapidly increasing global impact of this industry, NRDC and its partners are spearheading the Responsible Sourcing Initiative (RSI)—a key element of the larger Clean By Design initiative to curb pollution from the fashion industry.

Starting in China, the world’s largest center of manufacturing, NRDC’s team visited more than a dozen textile mills and selected five ‘typical’ dyeing and finishing mills for in-depth pollution prevention assessments. The assessments revealed ten simple, practical, low-cost, and quick payback opportunities to reduce water, energy, and chemical use.

Taken together, the practices described in this guide can save approximately 25 percent of water and 30 percent of fuel use—with initiatives that pay for themselves in less than eight months. A showcase mill, Redbud Textile Company in Changshu, China, adopted just three of these practices with a one-time cost of $72,000. The result was a 23 percent reduction in water use and an 11 percent reduction in coal consumption, with savings of nearly $840,000 per year accruing for Redbud.

Even absent concern about environmental impacts or government oversight, these best practices should be adopted because they enhance the productivity of mills and are good for business. Multinational apparel retailers and brands can reduce the footprint of their global supply chain by encouraging mills to adopt these best practices and rewarding those that do so with more business.