Clean By Design Takes on Chinese Textiles

NEW YORK — The National Resources Defense Council’s Clean by Design program is causing an evolution in textile manufacturing. Clean by Design, which presents solutions through a set of efficiency improvements for fabric dyeing and finishing that save money and reduce the environmental footprint, has made inroads at supplier factories in China and is set to expand. At a panel discussion last week at the Colony Club here, Linda Greer, director of the NRDC’s Health and Environmental Program, opened by showing a video of polluted waterways in China and remarked: “It’s often said that you know the color of the fashion for the next season by the color of the rivers in China.” Greer said when she started working in China, she realized that she couldn’t use the method of pushing the government to more strictly enforce environmental laws like she might have in the U.S., for example, because the Chinese government wasn’t interested. So she approached the private sector. “We’ve introduced the program now to about 200 mills and have carefully tracked implementation to about 50 of them,” Greer said. “It’s not just a matter of educating the mills, but tracking them and making sure pollution actually goes down. We have found that

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