Textile supply chain waste management in China

The development of the textile industry directly leads to the growth of pre-consumer waste generation. Investigating textile supply chain waste management in China is necessary to determine potential measures with the purpose of waste reduction from textile production. In this study, 396 textile supply chain factories in China were surveyed to evaluate their waste generation (quantity, waste streams, and disposal methods), waste management (practices, financial investments, expenditures and revenues), and difficulties and challenges in waste management. The results showed that the surveyed factories generated 331.88 t of the total waste in 2015, including an average of 15.32 t of hazardous waste, which accounted for 4.62% of the total waste. The average waste per ton of production in these factories were 0.14 t. The primary waste streams in the Chinese textile supply chain included sludge accounting for 41.67% of the total waste, followed by food/human (28.57%), textile (13.67%), other domestic (4.57%), cardboard/paper (4.30%), and chemical (3.15%) waste. Accumulated data related to the production of as sludge, other hazardous, and textile materials was sufficient; however, data related to human activities was inadequate. Only 35% of sludge was recycled in the textile industry. To improve the reuse ratio of sludge, it is necessary to classify the sludge with respect to its source. In the textile supply chain, 80% of textiles were recycled. Compared with post-consumer waste, the recovery rate of pre-consumer textile waste was high with a good recycling quality. Less than 20% of the food/human and domestic waste were recycled; most of these waste were mixed with other waste and collected by city municipalities in 2015. Further, there were a few recycling programs in mills. Our results also showed that the factories invested three times more in infrastructure than that in administrative expenditures, and that the revenues were nearly 50% of the total investments. Over 80% of factories were found to have an extended payback period (more than 10 years) for waste investments, and few factories could recoup the money invested in a short time frame. Among them, we found that more attention needs to be paid to financial problems of waste management in small-sized factories. Investing positively should be adopted by the government and brands. Based on our observations, the predominant problems encountered in waste management included a lack of technical support, lack of support from the government and brands, and shortage of qualified recycling contractor. To resolve these issues, collaborations between the government, brands, and suppliers is imperative. In general, China exhibited more sufficient waste management compared to Cambodia, Vietnam, South Korea, and Myanmar. However, waste management in China and these other countries have great potential for improvement. The results presented herein can provide information for policymakers as well as on systemic waste management in the textile industry.