The garment and textile industry has taken measures to protect the environment such as implementing cleaner production programme, encouraging enterprises to apply environmental management standards and creating a good workplace for labourers, the Vietnam Economic News reported on May 29.

Like many other producers, Vietnam’s garment and textile industry is facing environment pollution as the dyeing wastewater has a great amount of chemical waste disposal.

Being aware of this issue, many Vietnamese textile enterprises have recently not only built complex wastewater treatment systems but also applied a range of cleaner production measures like Nam Dinh Textile Company, Saigon Textile Company, Nhat Tri and Thuan Thien dyeing facilities.

As for cleaner production application, they took a range of measures such as sensibly using the correct levels of material and fuel sources for dyeing and weaving sector, operating wastewater treatment systems for dyeing production lines or moving dyeing facilities into industrial zones where they have had adequate wastewater treatment systems.

Applying cleaner production measures have helped the garment and textile sector meet a range of environmental requirements.

With appropriate cleaner production measures, each tonne of garment and textile products could save about 0.2-0.5kg of dye, 100-200kg of chemicals and additives, 50-100cu.m of water and reduced consumption of 150kg of oil and 50-150 kWh of electricity.

In addition, these measures also aimed to protect consumers' health. Therefore, the proportion of Vietnam’s garment and textile exports have continuously increased (to over 20 billion USD in 2013), especially to deamanding markets such as US and Japan.

To stabilise production and protect the environment, Vietnam’s garment and textile development strategy to 2015 with vision until 2020, the industry plans to move rural labourers to industrial parks and areas specialised in making garment and textile products.

To realise this goal, the application of cleaner production will be the optimal choice. In addition, the garment and textile industry will review the environmental impacts on the garment and textile development strategy and legal regulations on environment.

Other solutions for the garment and textile industry include implementing cleaner production programmes, encouraging enterprises to apply environmental management following ISO 14000 standard and creating a good workplace for labourers following SA 8000 standard.-VNA