Indian Textile Sector GHG-Water Footprint Study

The Indian Textile Sector GHG-Water Footprint study seeks to annually track the sector’s state of sustainability with respect to GHG emissions and water efficiency.

Objectives
The first report is planned to be released in 2010 and the primary objectives behind it are:

1. Generate a comprehensive grounds-up repository of energy utilization and emission at a unit and sector level
2. Identify areas of emission reductions and savings at an industry level as well as at a unit level
3. Get buy-in from international textile buyers on sustainability reporting initiatives and incorporating their input so that textile companies do not have to provide reporting for each buyer i.e. lower overhead.
4. Generating baseline information that can serve as a reference mark for policy makers and that would help determine financing requirements. In cases where applicable the baselines would also enable units to get access to funding through the CDM carbon-finance mechanism.
5. Lay the groundwork for certification so that textile units that obtain the certification can aspire for higher margins in the international market by being “Ecologically and Climate Friendly”
6. Identifying training needs for the sector with respect to eco-efficiency. Once training curriculum has been developed and being implemented then the report would track the impact on units and consequently on the sector.
7. Establish a framework to facilitate enhancement / development of the sectoral industrial policy aligned to the Prime Minister’s National Action Plan on Climate Change.

Context
As the Indian textile sector continues to modernize, sustainability presents the next frontier of development: providing potential cost savings as well as competitive differentiation, in addition to eco-efficiency.
Over the last decade the sector has gone through modernization of equipment and process improvements (through ISO) to enhance competitiveness in the global market. It is expected that in the coming decade energy efficiency and emission reduction (GHG and water) aspects will shape the competitive differentiators for the global marketplace.
It is also well known that cotton mills consume large volume of water for various processes such as sizing, desizing, scouring, bleaching, mercerization, dyeing, printing, finishing and ultimately washing.
Out of various activities in textile industry, chemical processing contributes about 70% of pollution. Due to the nature of various chemical processing of textiles, large volumes of waste water with numerous pollutants are discharged. Reuse of the effluents represents an opportunity from an ecological conservation and also to generate savings.

Building the sector’s eco-efficiency and sustainability: leveraging energy prices and water scarcity
With energy prices in India rising and being amongst the highest in the world, the sector has already started taking steps towards energy efficiency. Similarly with water scarcity rising, reuse measures are on the consideration list for many manufacturers. Hence the basic drivers exist. But given the low operating margins and lack of regulatory / mandatory requirements (from government or buyers), the sector has not yet proactively initiated mass-scale steps towards eco-efficiency or towards sustainability.

Goal of the annual sector GHG-water footprint report is to help bridge this need-gap by creating a heightened attention on the need for and lasting benefits of sustainability interventions; thereby facilitating capacity building for the textile clusters.

The theory of change is to leverage (a) competitive market dynamics driven by buyers and (b) the power of information visibility and peer pressure; to increase the adoption of sustainable practices.

The change is expected to evolve in a phased manner: initially Energy and water practices yielding short term savings will form the focal point for the interventions and attract requisite investment. For areas where return on investment is foreseen as being generated only after a sustained period of time, the goal is to build authentic bottom-up data to justify the potential and the anticipated success.