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Four textile producing countries — Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan and Viet Nam — have launched a programme to manage and reduce hazardous chemicals in textile industries with the aim of minimising risks to human health and the environment.
The governments of the four countries under the initiative of UN Environment Programme, with the financial support of the Global Environment Facility, on Friday made the agreement through launching a $43-million programme namely ‘Reducing uses and releases of chemicals of concern in the textiles sector’.
Employing over 10 million people, the four nations’ textile sectors account for near 15 per cent of global clothing exports.
Led by the UNEP, with the financial backing of the GEF and the support of the Basel & Stockholm Convention Regional Centre South-East Asia and the Natural Resources Defence Council, the programme will provide technical support and tools for small and medium enterprises and manufacturers to improve their knowledge and management of hazardous chemicals, guide them to manage risks to workers, and eventually eliminate the worst chemicals from their production processes, said a press release.
The press release issued by the UNEP said that the initiative would support businesses to manage risks to workers and eliminate the most toxic chemicals from their production processes as hazardous chemicals used in textile production pose significant risks to human health and the environment.
The economic benefits of the textile industry come at a cost, with the sector being one of the world’s major users of Persistent Organic Pollutants and per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, a family of approximately 12,000 synthetic chemicals which do not break down and accumulate in the environment, threatening human and ecosystem health, it said.
According to the UNEP, wet processing factories, where materials are turned into fabrics through bleaching, printing, dyeing, finishing and laundering typically use 0.58 kilogram of chemical inputs for every 1 kilogram of fabric produced.
These compounds leak into the environment at all phases of the textile lifecycle, from production to use, disposal and recycling, the UN organisation said.
The UNEP hoped that the five-year programme would bring the four countries together to align public policy on the textile sector with international best practice, including on supply chain transparency, investment for chemical management and eco-innovation, and occupational health and safety, creating the enabling environment needed to phase out PFAS and other chemicals of concern.
‘The textile sector is a major user of toxic “forever chemicals” which pollute local and global ecosystems,’ UNEP chemicals and waste programme officer Eloise Touni said.
While governments have agreed global bans of the worst chemicals through the Stockholm Convention on POPs, value chains still use thousands of hazardous chemicals like PFAS, she said.
Touni also said that the UNEP is proud to work with governments and front-runner companies to scale up best practices and phase out chemicals of concern across the whole sector.
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