The Green Textile City Initiative is aimed at scaling up sustainability efforts in large textile clusters in China. The initiative has been launched in partnership with leading global apparel retailers and fashion brands. The belief is that a sustainable textile industry will benefit the private sector while supporting a better environment in China and that best practices can drive significant environmental improvement and cost savings for apparel and textile supply chains.

The initiative provides sector-level capacity building and technical training for over 100 textile mills in three textile cities. Half of the trained mills implemented resource efficiency projects on their own. China produces more than half of the world’s textile fabrics, with 267 billion dollars in exports in 2016, but this water-and-energy intensive sector has a large environmental footprint.

In the Greater Suzhou Area alone, 23 textile mills implemented 138 factory projects last year, saving 8.4 million dollars in water, energy, and chemical operating costs. These projects had an average payback of 17 months and collectively saved four million cubic meters of water and 30,000 tons of coal per year. The initiative is an example of how partnerships and expertise of multiple stakeholders can be leveraged to scale up resource efficiency in manufacturing supply chains.