China standards

Meanwhile, Mr Sun Ruizhe, Vice president of the China National Textile & Apparel Council (CNTAC) highlighted how China’s textile sector will be driven in future by internal demand rather than exports, but said this would be accompanied by a much more considered approach to environmental and ethical issues.

“While China’s textile sector will experience a slow down in its export growth (due in part to a slowing demand in Europe), the growing domestic market will become the primary focus of attention for the industry,” he said. “However, the next phase of growth will have to adhere to strict new environmental legislation as well as ethical issues. Our CSC900T ethical standard will assume growing importance. There will be a migration from quantity to quality in our industry using our own standards which will also feature environmental hang-tags at point of sale for consumers.”

In a very high profile speaker line-up at the event, John Cheh, CEO of integrated cotton textile mill Esquel Group noted that sustainability for his organisation also equals profitability. “What’s good for the environment is also good for business,” he said as he described how in the last few years the company has reduced energy consumption by 40% and water consumption by 50%. “An annual saving equivalent to 6.8 million tonnes,” he said.

We’ll produce an in-depth report on the Planet Textiles conference in the next issue of Ecotextile News magazine. Key speakers also included Mr Kenneth Lo, Chairman of the giant Crystal Group, Mr David Chu of TAL Apparel, Christine Timkiw, Director of raw materials at Wal-Mart, Bril Lacno from Levi Strauss among others.