Original Post here on Sustainable Life Media
ByThomas Miner
September 27, 2010 – Last week at the Clinton Global Initiative 2 of the world’s largest clothing retailers, Walmart and H&M, agreed to work with their Chinese textile suppliers to reduce the water, energy, and chemical use in their supply chains through the Natural Resource Defense Council’s “Clean by Design“ project.
Based on the commitment announced today, Walmart agrees that the mills selected to implement NRDC’s program will provide benchmark data on water and energy use at the start of the assessment and will track and verify reductions they achieve. H&M, which operates more than 2,000 stores worldwide, launched a similar agreement with NRDC in Shanghai on Sept. 13.
So far, trial implementations at textile plants have shown that NRDC’s recommended practices can pay for themselves in less than eight months. Taken together, the best practices can cut approximately 25 percent of water and 30 percent of fuel use.
If just 100 small- to medium-sized textile mills implement NRDC’s recommended improvements, China would save more than 16 million metric tons of water annually, enough to provide 12.4 million people drinking water for a year. The practices can also eliminate nearly 1 million metric tons of CO2 annually, approximately the same amount of emissions from 172,000 cars per year.
Other retailers and brands collaborating with NRDC in the Clean by Design effort include Gap, Levi, Nike, Marks and Spencer, and Li and Fung, a large Hong Kong sourcing firm.
For a more in-depth understanding of NRDC’s Clean by Design program, watch below.
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