Estimating the environmental and economic impacts of widespread adoption of potential technology solutions to reduce water use and pollution: Application to China's textile industry

Abstract

Numerous technologies are emerging to reduce water use and pollution in China's textile industry, including several that are promoted by the China National Textile and Apparel Council as cleaner technologies in their five-year development guideline published in 2016. Though these technologies appear promising, the complexity of the industry makes it difficult to predict and compare the environmental and economic impacts of widespread adoption of these technologies. We draw on existing studies to estimate the potential scale of applicability of these technologies, and then estimate the potential economic and environmental benefits of encouraging their widespread adoption. Several of them, if implemented on a large scale, could drastically reduce water use and pollution with a payback of less than a year. Our approach to estimating the environmental and economic impacts of widespread adoption of promising technologies is also relevant for impact assessment in other complex industries with a wide range of products and processes.

Perception of selected sportswear brands with emphasis on expected benefits and features as prerequisite for customer satisfaction

“…Many authors focused on the environmental pollution issues [9][10][11][12][13]. Most of them deal with the environmental problems of textile industry in China, because the textile industry in China is the largest in the world in both overall production and exports.…”

Households’ Perception and Environmentally Friendly Technology Adoption: Implications for Energy Efficiency

“…For the most part, households are searching for a commodity that is comparatively cheap, easy to consume, and delivers innovations in the long run (Chen et al, 2019). EFT development has been noted to be sluggish since the promotion of their associated PBEFT has been lacking in the society (Xie and Huang, 2021).…”

“…Within a developing world such as Pakistan, purchasing decisions by households are dependent on the perceived benefits of a specific commodity (e.g., EFTs) they are going to purchase. If households know its perceived benefits, they would be ready to pay more for such technologies (Chen et al, 2019). Furthermore, (Manika et al, 2021), claimed that a relative benefit of some technology could guarantee that the households had a choice to replace the latest technology with the earlier one.…”

Textile Industry in a Changing World

“…All the operations aimed at improving the appearance of the fabrics have a huge potential to harm the environment due to the large consumption of both water and chemicals (Samanta et al 2019;Tounsadi et al 2020). Large efforts have been made to minimize these impacts, by reducing the water demand of these operations, using more eco-friendly pigments and dyes, sometimes even using natural dyes applied in soft conditions, and shifting to chlorine-free bleaching agents, but much more work could yet be done (Chen et al 2019;De Smet et al 2020;Haji and Naebe 2020;Hussain and Wahab 2018;Vouters et al 2004). Super-repellency and its application to "easy-cleaning" textiles (Blossey 2003) is another current challenge of great relevance for the textile industry.…”