6/10/2023 0 Comments Factory town chinaThere is clearly nothing "environmental’ about this environmental industrial park. From 2006 they started to put Xintang under some sort of government control and gradually began moving denim washing and dyeing plants to an environmental industrial park in Xizhou Village on the west side of town. It polluted the river and local people were furious. Xintang’s first dye mill was opened in Dadun Village. Local people are well aware of the pollution from the denim industry, but incomers seeking work and people in downstream areas often have little idea of the damage being caused. Welcome to the “environmental” industrial park This included a sample of river mud with cadmium levels 128 times over the limit and another where the water pH level was 11.95. In November 2010 Greenpeace published a survey which found that at three sampling sites in Xintang, the amounts of lead, copper and cadmium in the riverbed exceeded national "soil environmental quality standards". It has rained in the last few days and there are clear signs of blue dye in the water. Next to the Nizi Bridge in Xintang there are piles of blue fluff like the lint which accumulates in the filter of a domestic washing machine. If it didn’t rain for a few days, you would find that the water turned dark blue.” But there were lots of small factories which didn’t know where to get rid of their waste water, so they secretly poured it back into the river. “Last year the township government made a fuss about cleaning them up, and moved about 80 of them to the new Xinzhou Environmental Industry Park. "Denim washing factories are a dime a dozen in Xintang these days,” explains Dong. Xintang’s Dadun Village waste water treatment plant has been closed for over a year. But the waste water from the washing mainly goes untreated into the river. Whether a pair of jeans looks fashionable, medium-range or cheap mainly depends, apart from the cotton and the design, on how it is washed. Washing makes the cloth look old and gives it texture. Making jeans involves a number of stages, including design, washing, adding rivets, cutting and packaging. Sixteen years ago he would go swimming with his girlfriend in the East River. They spill the water from dyeing straight into the East River." Only those factories which dye denim emit such filthy water. Under the hot sun, a local man, Dong Yaoming (not his real name), points at a map and says, "This stretch is definitely caused by the bleach factory. The water in the East River in Xintang has turned blue and smells strange. Yet the town’s most serious problem is obvious from a local saying: "Xintang is so badly polluted that you can’t give away houses for people to live there." Raw material costs are rising, it’s hard to raise capital, labour costs are continually increasing, and there’s a lack of well-known brands. Around two-thirds of the denim clothing made in China is produced in Xintang.īut Xintang is undergoing a crisis. At first sight its production statistics are impressive: the factories there produce 300 million denim articles a year, employing 220,000 people. One in three pairs of jeans sold globally is made in this industrial town, in Guangdong province. Xintang is the denim capital of the world.
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