China’s textile industry “breaks the wall” with sustainable supply chain

At the China-EU Sustainable Supply Chain High-level Forum held in Beijing from November 28th to 29th, Zhao Ping, director of the International Trade Research Department of the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade, said bluntly: “Green trade barriers have gradually become trade protectionism. Among the new methods, the “Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) Guidance Catalog” launched by the European Commission is particularly worthy of attention. At present, PEF has entered the legal process. China’s fabric workwear industry has not completely gotten rid of high energy consumption, high emissions and labor intensity. In the current state of production, once PEF is implemented, China’s fabric products exported to Europe may face a cliff-like decline. It is a breakthrough to continue the supply chain of the website fabric industry.” Jiang Zengwei, President of the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade, said that the relevant interests of the China-Europe fabric industry Only by strengthening exchanges among stakeholders in optimizing sustainable industrial chains, improving resource utilization efficiency and quality standards, and expanding practical cooperation in trade, investment, technology research and development, etc. can they jointly make the pie of cooperation bigger.

Green trade barriers should not be underestimated

In the first 10 months of this year, China’s total exports of fabric workwear reached US$2,195.46, a year-on-year decrease of 6.53%, and the decline continued to expand. Behind the decline in exports, the specter of trade protectionism appears. Some media reported that on March 11, the European Union and the United States attacked Chinese fabric products almost simultaneously and planned to take measures to restrict the import of Chinese fabric products. On April 1, the European Union increased the import tariff on Chinese fabric workwear from 9% to 12%. And this is only the “obvious external worry” faced by the fabric industry. Under the wave of economic integration, green trade barriers with three major characteristics: legitimacy, rationality, and effectiveness are gradually replacing tariff barriers and becoming a new means of trade protectionism. Among green trade barriers, PEF is particularly worthy of attention. PEF is completely based on the product life cycle assessment method (LCA) and conducts green inspections on imported products and every link in their supply chain. In other words, LCA evaluation runs through the entire life cycle of products, processes and activities, including raw material extraction and sorting, product manufacturing, transportation and sales, product use, reuse and maintenance, waste recycling and final waste disposal. Only products that provide PEF evaluation data and have an evaluation data index of more than 70% are eligible to enter the EU market. Therefore, once PEF is implemented, it means that the environmental standards of the EU market will be raised in all aspects.

Accelerate the creation of a sustainable supply chain in the fabric industry

Faced with the huge impact that PEF may bring, countries such as Japan and South Korea have long and systematically carried out LCA research and application. Some countries have selected 1 or 2 domestic industries for pilot projects, used LCA to conduct product environmental impact assessments on the pilot industries, and established their own PEF plans based on the pilot results. As a large exporter of fabric products, China is obviously much slower in dealing with PEF. “From a national level, there is currently no basic LCA database to deal with PEF in China, let alone an authoritative evaluation agency. From an enterprise level, the current environmental governance capabilities of Chinese export enterprises cannot meet PEF standards at all. However, many enterprises still do not understand PEF. It is impossible to talk about the impact on corporate exports, and it is impossible to take countermeasures. According to calculations by the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade, the losses suffered by China’s fabric workwear exports to the EU last year due to non-compliance in various tests accounted for 18.9% of the total.” Zhao Ping said.

Zhao Ping said that the sustainable supply chain of the website fabric industry must be put on the agenda as soon as possible. First of all, we should aim to develop ecological fabric products and promote ecological design and certification of fabric products with environmental product declarations as the starting point. Secondly, we need to promote fabric raw material manufacturers to carry out clean production, encourage natural fiber manufacturers to reduce source pollution, support the optimization of chemical fiber production processes, and develop regenerated fibers and synthesis with biomass engineering technology as the core. Finally, we must promote the recycling of waste fabrics, develop the recycled polyester industry, and choose economical and reasonable options.�Recycle and utilize technical routes to build a circular economy industrial chain.

In order to promote the implementation of the results of the forum, the United Nations Environment Program and the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade jointly announced the “Action Plan for Sustainable Supply Chain of Fabric Products in China”, through sustainable standard system construction projects, intelligent production projects, etc. The four key projects outline the path for building a sustainable supply chain in the fabric industry. “We hope that not only the fabric industry will pay attention to PEF, but also Chinese enterprises exporting to the EU should attach great importance to PEF. By building a website, we can continue to improve the resource-saving and environmentally friendly development model of the supply chain. At the same time, China should also build its own PEF website , to avoid the entry of products that are not conducive to ecological and environmental protection.” Zhao Ping said.

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