Pollution blind spot in Chinese garment sector

Therefore, sustainable apparel has this dangerous blind spot that means that dyeing and finishing enterprises lower their environmental standards in order to win orders, which in turn creates a race to the bottom.

In order to push brands to make green choices, on April 9th, 2012, five environmental NGOs, Friends of Nature, the Institute of Public & Environmental Affairs, Green Beagle, Envirofriends and Nanjing Green Stone jointly published an investigative report titled “Cleaning up the Fashion Industry ”.

H&M, Nike, Esquel, Levi’s, Adidas, Walmart, Burberry and Gap all proactively followed up and established a regular screening mechanism, actively identified pollution records in their supply chain and pushed more than 200 textile and leather suppliers to make explanations regarding their violation problems and the follow-up actions they have taken. Out of these, Adidas, Nike, Levi’s and H&M have already begun to extend management down to dyeing and finishing suppliers.

However, faced with specific questions from environmental NGOs about emissions violation problems in their supply chain, there are still 22 brands, including Marks & Spencer, Disney, J.C. Penney, Polo Ralph Lauren and Tommy Hilfiger that chose the other option and either gave a limited response or no response. Amongst these was the British company Marks & Spencer.

This company has its “Plan A” which has become a sustainable business benchmark for global textile companies and retailers. Through further research we discovered that suspected material suppliers to this company, which claims to be the first brand to be “zero waste,” “carbon neutral” and to have established a “cradle to cradle” business model, have actually had a serious impact on local communities and the environment through their pollution discharge.

As a customer of these suppliers, Marks & Spencer, faced with questions from environmental NGOs, has evaded answering these questions and has done as little as possible.

If Marks & Spencer is unwilling to face the pollution problems in their supply chain and deliberately choose to stand on the wrong side, they should let the world know about their choice and not continue to let suppliers pollute the environment and hurt communities whilst using concepts such as “zero waste” and “carbon neutral” to green wash their performance. 

Consumers also need to make a choice. We believe that consumers of Marks & Spencer, Disney, J.C. Penney, Polo Ralph Lauren and Tommy Hilfiger products are not willing to accept damage to the environment and communities in order to keep the cost of their fashionable clothes low.

For the sake of the environment and to ensure that we can give our children a safe place to live, we propose that consumers make brands like Marks & Spencer aware of their feelings. Please help us make the brands sit up and listen!

The Institute of Public & Environmental Affairs (IPE)