Women’s Wear Daily: NRDC Expands Environmental Factory Program
Posted below is another article about NRDC’s Responsible Sourcing Initiatives (RSI) that was published in Women’s Wear Daily on August 10, 2010, written by Kristi Ellis.
Retailers and brands are broadening their scrutiny of global textile suppliers after an initiative with an environmental group led to greater efficiencies and pollution control in China.
Some of the six companies that have partnered with the National Resources Defense Council, a nonprofit environmental protection organization, have already seen improvements in the textile supply chain in China and they are ready to turn next to a new pilot project in Bangladesh.
Textile mills in Changshu, Jiangsu Province ©NRDC China/ Li Yang
The textile industry shares the mantle of being the worst water polluter in China with the chemical industry, according to the NRDC, while the steel, cement and petroleum sectors have a bigger impact on the environment through air pollution.
Women’s Wear Daily: NRDC Tackles China’s Textile Pollution
Posted below is an article about NRDC’s Responsible Sourcing Initiatives (RSI) which was first published in Women’s Wear Daily on June 29, 2010, written by Ross Tucker.
The Natural Resources Defense Council believes the apparel industry’s efforts to lower its environmental impact will require brands and retailers to look further down their supply chains to become more familiar with, and ultimately take more responsibility for, their suppliers at the fabric level.
Textile mills in Changshu, Jiangsu Province ©NRDC China/ Li Yang
The NRDC’s interest in the textile sector came about in 2007 after it opened an office in Beijing tasked with tackling pollution issues in the country. Linda Greer, director of the NRDC’s health and environment program, traveled to China late that year to assess the nation’s leading polluters and ways in which the NRDC could work with companies and the Chinese government to lower their environmental impact. The NRDC is a nonprofit environmental protection organization founded in 1970 that now employs a staff of more than 300 lawyers, scientists and policy experts.
Read more…
China Textile Magazine Article: The Power of NGOs in Driving Industrial Energy Efficiency
Posted below with the permission of the author, Xu Huan, is the English translation of an article about NRDC’s Responsible Sourcing Initiative (RSI) which appeared in China Textile Magazine‘s June Issue:
In today’s society, due to the constant growth of the market economy, all production units and individuals have a dual identity; they are both consumers and producers. Any company or individual can make a substantial contribution to environmental protection through promoting green sourcing. This is our undeniable duty.
The Power of NGOs in Driving Industrial Energy Efficiency
Written by Xu Huan
The starting point of a green textile trade
At the first International Textile Industry Green Summit, held on March 29th in Changshu, Jiangsu Province, partners from Changshu and Jiangsu Province came together with NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council) to kick off “The Textile Industry’s Best Practice City,” a project aimed at helping textile enterprises in Changshu contribute to the low-carbon economy and sustainable development. This marks a major step taken by NRDC’s Responsible Sourcing Initiative (RSI). Through influencing the purchasing orientation of multinational garment retailers and well-known brands, this initiative aims to help textile mills in the supply chain control pollution and promote environmental protection.
Other initiators of RSI also include Wal-Mart, Gap, Levi, H&M, Nike and Li & Fung—the most influential multinational buyers in the world. With these major buyers at the top of the supply chain on board, this project exudes a unique kind of power. According to Franky, the director of Gap’s environmental affairs, Gap has been committed to social responsibility work for 15 years, and its efforts have steadily evolved from simple priorities such as labor protection to include more complex ones such as water resource conservation, energy development and environmental protection. “Some jobs can not be done single-handedly. In 2010, we will focus on the supply chain, training enterprises both up and downstream and setting requirements of clean production and energy saving for our raw materials suppliers.”
Gap, Wal-Mart, Nike and the like are not alone in having transformed their Corporate Social Responsibility Departments into a “Sustainability Departments.” Mr. Chen Jie, the former Director of Fabric for Wal-Mart’s Global Fabric Sourcing Office, noted that in October of 2008, Wal-Mart established its Department of Sustainability, setting higher social responsibility requirements for the company itself and advancing incentives for energy savings and emissions reductions in the supply chain. The company also requires that its top 200 Chinese suppliers reach a 20% goal in energy efficiency and emissions reduction. Nike was also one of the companies to realize consumers’ demand for green products, so the company has been working on environmental protection and circular usage for years. Bob, the Director of E2 Nike, disclosed that from 2010, Nike will require that environmental protection and energy efficiency in the manufacturing process be taken into account starting in the design phase. Nike will also pay careful attention to the impact of the product’s life cycle on the environment.
In any case, the measures being adopted by these sourcing giants indicate that the trend of global consumption is gradually being pushed towards “sustainability” and “green” brands. Being green and environmentally friendly will eventually become the undeniable hard index of manufacturers.
It is worth mentioning that the “Textile Industry’s Best Practice City” is confined to textile mills in Changshu. This shows, on the one hand, that Changshu textile companies are working diligently to improve their environmental profile and, on the other hand, that the giants at the end of the supply chain are paying more attention to Changshu. Through close collaboration with NRDC’s RSI, Changshu has taken the lead in implementing energy efficiency and environmental protection management, emerging as the starting point of green textile trade between the Chinese textile industry and international clients. This presents the city with an opportunity to enter the international green trade sourcing chain for textile products. The municipal government of Changshu holds high expectations for this undertaking. In the kick-off ceremony, Mayor Hui Jianlin clearly stated that “the city will deepen its cooperation with NRDC and co-found a mechanism for long-term cooperation. Under the support of the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Jiangsu’s Environmental Protection Bureau, we will shape Changshu into a green Davos in the international textile industry.”
RSI is not a means that these international end buyers use to simply shirk their social responsibility for environmental protection. The first benefit for Changshu mills that joined RSI via the “Textile Industry’s Best Practice City” program is that they are provided a free, mill-specific energy efficiency assessment and methods for improvement by industry experts. To minimize the cost and impact on production of these changes, the experts begin with the front line of production, with the equipment currently available. They select some improvement measures that are easy to implement, require low investment and enjoy a short payback period (around 8 months). At the project kick-off ceremony, a handbook called “NRDC’s Ten Best Practices for Textile Mills to Save Money and Reduce Pollution” was distributed to Changshu mills. The manual describes in detail ten measures that help to save water, energy and money, which are universally applicable to Chinese textile dyeing and finishing mills，as well as input and output ratios.
The manual does not recommend expensive equipment or a systematic overhaul, but rather emphasizes “improving measurement systems,” “leakage checking and preventative maintenance,” “steam traps maintenance,” “insulation of pipelines and valves,” “condensate/cooling water reuse,” “heat recovery,” “compressed air system optimization” and other easy measures for enhanced energy efficiency in the production process. Since 2006, NRDC RSI has collaborated with the Jiangsu Academy of Environmental Sciences to set up an expert team for process control, pollution reduction and energy auditing. Over the course of three years, through dozens of mill visits and the in-depth analysis of several others, the RSI team selected this set of best practices with regard to environmental protection as a stepping-stone towards altering the mills’ mindsets and elevating their performance. “At little or no cost, we can improve the efficiency of the dyeing and finishing process, as well as energy and resource efficiency to significantly ramp up environmental performance. The benefits of energy saving are great enough to repay the efficiency investment within a period of only a few months.” Cindy Lin, an NRDC Associate, encouraged enterprise delegates to adopt these efficiency measures by emphasizing their economic benefits. By the end of the kick-off ceremony, almost ten enterprises registered for the RSI project.
Obtaining the commitment of multinational buyers and the Changshu government, the cooperation of the Ministry of Environmental Protection, the experts’ pro bono consulting, and the easy and effective “Ten Best Practices,” it is, perhaps, surprising to find that the driving force behind the mobilization of so many resources, completion of design projects, handling of on-the-ground work and launching of the “China Station” for green trade of global textiles, came from an NGO which is not even remotely related to the textile industry–NRDC.
China Textile Magazine Article: For Beautiful Mountains and Water
Posted below with the permission of the author, Xu Huan, is the English translation of an interview of NRDC Global Environment and Health Program Director, Dr. Linda Greer, which appeared in China Textile Magazine‘s June issue:
For Beautiful Mountains and Water
–An interview with NRDC Global Environment and Health Program Director, Dr. Linda Greer.
Written by Xu Huan
China Textile: In your 30 years of environmental protection experience, what do you find are the differences between the textile industry and other industries? What are the challenges to environmental protection in the textile industry?
Linda: In most other industries, water is mainly used in the cooling process—where water is heated, but the water quality remains unchanged—however, given their production features, textile mills not only guzzle water, but also contaminate it. Textile mills use water in the dyeing and rinsing processes, the result to process water being that it is polluted. The most damaging pollutants contained within discharged water are oxygen-depleting molecules. When discharged into rivers, these molecules absorb available oxygen, thereby damaging the flora and fauna. What’s more, the hazardous heavy metals and chemicals contained in the dye threaten the environment and drinking water further downstream, which poses a challenge for treatment.
China Textile: What does the future of RSI (Responsible Sourcing Initiative) hold? How many plants can be changed?
Linda: Our plan is to encourage a few hundred mills to join our initiative. The short-term goal is to work with 20 mills in Changshu, or about 20% of all the dyeing and finishing mills in the city. We want to make Changshu “The Best Practice City,” so 20 mills could be representative. While these projects are underway, we will also work on facilities in other cities, but this work will depend on the interest of multinational buyers in those facilities.
NRDC Beijing Office Job Opportunities
NRDC’s Beijing office is currently accepting applications for the positions of Policy Analyst and Industrial Engineer.
Detailed job descriptions as well as requisite qualifications and application instructions are contained in the attached job postings.
Industrial Engineer Job Posting
Copenhagen Media Report – Day 9
Filed Under Climate Change, Environmental News, Feature Article
By Li Yang · December 16, 2009 · Leave a comment
Today, access to Bella Center is even stricter. Heads of states are arriving starting from today, including Gordon Brown.
Right now, some of our luckier NRDC colleagues are inside the Bella Center attending conferences, while the others are standing in a desperately long queue, blogging with freezing fingers.
Highlights of yesterday：
- Africa staged a virtual walkout, putting things on hold for about 6 hours and forcing the negotiations to regroup and restructure. Fortunately, COP President Connie Hedegaard was able to broker an end to the walkout, and negotiations resumed at 8pm.
- A few new texts came out last night focusing on finance, adaptation and technology issues. But so many texts and several processes have left many delegates and NGO observers confused about how the texts will fit together.
- Pictures of yesterday can be seen at http://www.iisd.ca/climate/cop15/
- Summary texts are available for download here:
COP President Connie Hedegaard during the afternoon informal plenary session © http://www.iisd.ca/climate/cop15/
News articles
- “China and U.S. Hit Strident Impasse at Climate Talks,” New York Times
- “The US is on board,” New York Times
Copenhagen Media Report – Day 5
This is the last day for me to share secondhand information from my colleagues and NGO coalition e-mail groups. I’ll arrive in Copenhagen on Sunday night and send back on-site observations from there next week.
Notable News Articles:
Chinese minister links ‘one-child’ policy to emissions reduction at climate conference
A senior official of the Chinese ministry responsible for the country’s coercive population-control program is citing the controversial “one-child” policy as a successful way to reduce emissions of the gases blamed for global warming. …The 400 million births prevented as a result of China’s policy since it was introduced in the 1970s, and the drop in the child-per-couple average from 5.8 to 1.8, resulted in 1.8 billion fewer tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) being emitted each year, Zhao said.
US Senators unveiled a framework for future US action on climate change, embracing emission cuts in a boost for the Copenhagen summit, but also including controversial measures on nuclear power and offshore drilling.
Copenhagen Media Report – Days 2 and 3
NRDC’s official side event: China and the World: Solving climate change through practical, on-the-ground collaboration, was held successfully in the Bella Center.
It is the first side event discussing China and over 200 people participated in the event.
Visit NRDC China’s website to download PowerPoint slides of the 5 panelists, read blog posts by some of the speakers, and view the pictures and media coverage of this event.
Other News:
- Copenhagen climate summit in disarray after ‘Danish text’ leak
- Developing countries react furiously to a leaked draft agreement that would hand more power to rich nations, sideline the UN’s negotiating role and abandon the Kyoto Protocol, according to an article from Guardian.
- The New York Times has made a Who’s Who of the Copenhagen conference, briefly and clearly listed all the interest groups and each of their standpoints, population, GDP number, total carbon emission and its percentage in the global total
- Cap and Trade has always been a controversial issue ever since the concept was born. Will it be an effective mechanism for solving the issue of reduce carbon emission? How do we ensure it can work the way it was designed? NRDC climate and energy expert David Doniger has posted a new blog entry in response to the new round of debate over cap-and-trade at Copenhagen to give us a fuller picture and better understanding of the issue.
Copenhagen Media Report – Day 1
On Dec 7th, 2009, the highly anticipated international climate negotiation– COP15 of UNFCCC finally opened its curtains.
NRDC, as an official side event organizer and NGO observer, has sent a delegation to Copenhagen to actively lobby and promote positive progress of the negotiations. As the Communications Associate in charge of press work, I’ve been consolidating information and summarizing them to share with our media contacts. Now we are posting them on Greenlaw to share with our viewers. We hope you find these media reports to be helpful reference materials.
Day 1 Media Report:
A special section of the NRDC website on Copenhagen contains experts’ blog posts commenting on the ongoing negotiations and analyzing commitments made by different countries:
Recent blog posts by NRDC experts:
“Financing the Deal: Copenhagen Climate Talks”
NRDC International Program expert Heather Allen
“My First Day in Copenhagen”
Barbara Finamore, NRDC China Program Director