Linda Greer's Blog: Health and the Environment tag:switchboard.nrdc.org,2010:/blogs/lgreer//58 2010-03-04T16:45:36Z Movable Type Enterprise 1.52 Persistent, bioaccumulative, toxic: why Congress needs to phase out PBTs now tag:switchboard.nrdc.org,2010:/blogs/lgreer//58.5469 2010-03-04T16:35:55Z 2010-03-04T16:45:36Z Linda Greer As Congress gears up for chemical policy reform, key committees have been calling in experts for hearings to discuss the many possible dimensions of much-needed Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) reform legislation.

Today I’m testifying in the latest of these hearings, before the House Energy and Commerce Committee, about an issue that hits home for me personally: persistent bioaccumulative toxicants, or PBTs.  These are some of the “bad actor” chemicals that should be put on a fast track to phaseout in coming TSCA reform legislation. I’ll get to my personal stake in this later, but first, a little background.

Everything that’s dangerous about PBTs is contained in that very term.  They are persistent: once they are released into the environment, they don’t go away.  They are bioaccumulative, actually accumulating and increasing in concentration in living things over time.  That means that even low concentrations in air, water, or soil can lead to levels hundreds or thousands of times higher in living things. And, of course, they are toxic. PCBs, banned in 1979, are a good poster child for this phenomenon.

Remarkably, however, PBTs as a class of chemicals are not a thing of the past. Despite the notoriety of this class and all we have learned about them over the past thirty years, there are still many such chemicals that continue to be used in commerce today —and sometimes in very large quantities. For example, some polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) are  still used as flame retardants in plastics, polyurethane foams, and textiles even though safer alternatives are available.

The consequence of such delay in getting PBTs and other dangerous chemicals off the market may well have had a personal impact on me.  Three years ago, as I continued my life-long career to reduce toxic chemical pollution, I got a call from my doctor and then found myself struggling to come to terms with the diagnosis every woman dreads – breast cancer.  I found myself thinking what everyone thinks in a situation like this – why did this happen to me? I have a healthy life style, exercise and watch my diet, am a pretty “clean live-er”. I don’t have most of the conventional risk factors for breast cancer, why me?  And not just why me, but why so many colleagues and friends? 

One difference between me and many other women with breast cancer, however, is my familiarity with the science – and with the unforgivable abdication in the government’s responsibility to protect the public from the cancer hazards posed by environmental contaminants.  This is what the weakness of TSCA has yielded over the past thirty years, and it’s time to reform the law.

Common sense tells us that chemicals with a PBT profile are bad actors, and that laws designed to protect people from dangerous environmental contaminants would prioritize the phase out of chemicals with this profile.  Safer chemicals are those that will degrade and metabolize easily back into harmless chemicals after use – not those that will take shelter in our bones, blood or fat deposits for the rest of eternity.

As I will tell the Energy and Commerce Committee today, Congress must mandate the phase-out of at least the handful best known bad actors in a reauthorized TSCA and put our country on a path toward use of safer chemicals.  It must at the same time expand EPA’s authority to collect information for the tens of thousands of chemicals without basic safety data.

]]> Part VI -- Stemming the Tide of Toxic Chemicals: A Special Focus on Endocrine Disruptors tag:switchboard.nrdc.org,2009:/blogs/lgreer//58.2837 2009-03-13T14:30:50Z 2009-03-17T10:44:01Z Linda Greer In the last week, I’ve written about the urgent need for federal reform of the toxic chemical regulatory process in the United States. Today, I’ll wrap up my series with a plea for a special focus on endocrine disruptors, a class of chemicals that disrupt our hormone systems, which are in charge of all aspects of fetal development as well as the day-to-day running of our bodies as adults.

Why endocrine disruptors?  Thanks to extensive media coverage of this class of chemicals, Congress and the general public now understand the need to move here, which has increased the pressure for comprehensive chemical reform as well.

This is true both because the problems posed by bisphenol A, phthalates, dangerous flame retardants and other endocrine disrupting chemicals underscore the need for a more sensible approach, and because Congress and the states have increasingly adopted measures that narrowly target these chemicals, such as the recently adopted phthalates bans in toys.

In the coming year, we will work on this class of chemicals separately as well as under the banner of comprehensive chemical reform. We will specifically focus this work on four classes of endocrine disruptors:  (1) phthalates; (2) the antimicrobials Triclocarban (TCC) and Triclosan (TCS); (3) Bisphenol-A (BPA); and (4) flame-retardants. 

Now is the time to act.

Insufficient regulations and lax enforcement have allowed far too large a stream of toxics to flow into our daily lives. The rates of environmentally linked diseases are rising and new threats to children are emerging. Science and common sense regulations can help us stem the tide of toxic chemicals and protect our health and the health of our families.

See also:

]]> Part V -- Stemming the Tide of Toxic Chemicals: Restoring Science tag:switchboard.nrdc.org,2009:/blogs/lgreer//58.2836 2009-03-11T14:30:00Z 2009-11-06T04:19:40Z One of the biggest opportunities in the area of toxic chemical regulation and reform is the ceaseless march of our scientific knowledge. In fact, as I previously noted, while government policy toward stemming the tide of toxic chemicals has stagnated,... Linda Greer One of the biggest opportunities in the area of toxic chemical regulation and reform is the ceaseless march of our scientific knowledge. In fact, as I previously noted, while government policy toward stemming the tide of toxic chemicals has stagnated, the amount of solid scientific information about the hazards posed by a number of existing chemicals such as endocrine disruptors has multiplied dramatically.

In fact, the National Academy of Sciences recently published three very helpful new reports:

  1. Science and Decisions: Advancing Risk Assessment, which covers new science in risk assessment.
  2. Phthalates and Cumulative Risk Assessment, which reviews the feasibility and desirability of assessing the cumulative risks of multiple chemical exposures.
  3. Toxicity Testing in the 21st Century: A Vision and a Strategy, which explores rapid and effective testing methods to assess inherent hazard.

These reports have many findings and conclusions that support positions that the environmental community has promoted for years, and very few that support the status quo.

As such, the NAS reports provide extremely valuable basis for the need for chemical policy reform. EPA and Congress should follow NAS advice on the most crucial elements for reform.

Furthermore, the scientists who worked on the panels for each of these reports are now both informed and highly credible experts for hearings and legislative debates and well as for workshops or small meetings with Agency staff working to apply the best science to decision-making.

Tomorrow: Wrapping up with a special focus on endocrine disruptors.

See also:

]]> Part IV -- Stemming the Tide of Toxic Chemicals: What the Obama Administration Must Do Now tag:switchboard.nrdc.org,2009:/blogs/lgreer//58.2835 2009-03-09T14:30:29Z 2009-03-17T03:42:17Z Linda Greer In the months after last November’s election, NRDC’s health program developed a list of more than 50 steps that the new administration needed to undertake quickly. Many of these steps address problems in the Environmental Protection Agency’s core chemical decision-making program, the Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS).

Our recommendations were proven timely when in January the Government Accountability Office identified the IRIS program as “high-risk for waste, fraud, abuse and mismanagement or in need of broad-based transformation,” substantially raising its profile as a troubled area of governmental decision-making.

We believe there are similar amounts of work to be done with Food and Drug Administration and the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

For example, NRDC has already initiated and will continue to pursue:

  • Action to press the FDA to revisit its finding that the presence of Bisphenol A in food and food packaging is safe.  NRDC has already petitioned the FDA to ban the use of BPA as a food additive, and continues to provide expert comments on the recent scientific literature concerning BPA.
  •  Oversight of the CPSC’s evaluation of the safety of phthalates, and enforcing the ban enacted by Congress on the use of six phthalates in toys and other children’s products (the ban is supposed to take effect February 10, 2009). (NRDC has already filed and won a lawsuit seeking to overturn the CPSC’s interpretation for violating the law that Congress passed and will avail itself of every opportunity to alter the CPSC’s implementation of this important new law.)
  •  Updating and improving FDA’s assessment of the safety and effectiveness of two widely used anti-microbial substances that are also endocrine disruptors, Triclocarban and Triclosan, and the CPSC’s proposed furniture flammability standard.

NRDC will work to ensure that the agencies complete these tasks in a manner that is health-protective and scientifically credible. In addition to working directly with the agencies on these issues, we are also assisting key members of Congress and their staff on oversight of these issues, including, where appropriate, suggesting necessary hearings and potential expert testimony.

Next up: Bringing more science expertise into the toxic chemical reform process.

See also:

]]> Part III -- Stemming the Tide of Toxic Chemicals: A Guide to Action tag:switchboard.nrdc.org,2009:/blogs/lgreer//58.2834 2009-03-06T14:30:25Z 2009-03-17T03:46:15Z As I've noted previously, our bedrock law for the regulation of toxic chemicals -- the Toxics Substance Control Act -- is all but dead. In fact, the law is widely regarded as the greatest failure among the major environmental laws... Linda Greer As I've noted previously, our bedrock law for the regulation of toxic chemicals -- the Toxics Substance Control Act -- is all but dead. In fact, the law is widely regarded as the greatest failure among the major environmental laws passed in the 1970s.

The law puts the burden of proof on EPA to demonstrate that a chemical poses an unreasonable risk to public heath or the environment before any measures to restrict the chemical can be taken. That's even the case before the EPA can force a company to conduct additional tests.

The burdens of proof make meaningful use of the law almost impossible. As a result, of the approximately 62,000 chemicals being produced or sold at the time of the law's passage in 1976, EPA has used its authority to require testing for fewer than 200. In the 32 years since the law's adoption, only eight chemicals -- or classes of chemicals -- have been banned for any uses such as PCBs.

To fix the system, Congress must:

  • Streamline the EPA's authority to obtain health and safety data.
  • Require additional testing for chemicals from companies.
  • Shift the burden of proof from government to industry to prove that a chemical is safe before it is approved for use (or to continue being used if it's already on the market.)
  • Increase use of biomonitoring to guide testing priorities.
  • Make the process more transparent and make more information available to the public.

While new legislation will be the cornerstone to toxic chemical reform, the devil of decision-making is in the details, which are developed and articulated in the administrative branch of government.

Therefore, there are a many important opportunities to set priorities and promote streamlined decision-making and more precautionary approaches in chemical evaluation in the administrative agencies, even while waiting for a new legislative mandate.

In particular, there are two key targets of opportunity for the Obama Administration to undertake in 2009:

1) Work to reverse harmful chemical policies and rules adopted under the Bush administration, such as the heavy-handed Office of Management and Budget (OMB) review.

2) Provide federal agencies with up-to-date scientific evidence that promotes the most modern and sound approaches to analyzing the hazard and risks of chemicals.

NRDC's Health Program has developed a list of more than 50 steps that EPA, FDA, and other agencies must take in the first months of the new Administration to reverse years of neglect in chemicals management and other related matters.

More tomorrow on what the Obama Administration can and should immediately do to help make the American public safe from toxic chemicals.

See also:

]]> Part II: Stemming the Tide of Toxic Chemicals -- Why Now? tag:switchboard.nrdc.org,2009:/blogs/lgreer//58.2833 2009-03-04T14:30:33Z 2009-03-17T03:53:41Z As I wrote earlier this week, our national system for regulating toxic chemicals is broken and desperately in need of repair. Luckily, five key developments have set the stage for the best opportunity to make significant gains on chemical policy... Linda Greer As I wrote earlier this week, our national system for regulating toxic chemicals is broken and desperately in need of repair. Luckily, five key developments have set the stage for the best opportunity to make significant gains on chemical policy reform that we've ever seen.

First and foremost, the change in political leadership in the White House and Congress fundamentally unfreezes the legislative and administrative processes to allow meaningful hearings and oversight to consider and address problems with the current approach to chemical regulation. This is true at the most general level and at the more specific levels of who holds key leadership positions, including Committee and subcommittee Chairmanships in both Houses of Congress.

Second, the European Union's adoption of a progressive and comprehensive chemical policy statute -- Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH) -- has dramatically changed the global landscape of chemicals management. Although it is early in its implementation, REACH has already forced all chemical companies who trade with the EU to confront a new chemicals management regime that, among other things, requires greater information disclosure, and shift the burden of proof on safety from government to industry. REACH also creates the prospect of actual restrictions on use of chemicals, including complete bans in some instances.

Third, while things have essentially stagnated at the federal level in the U.S., environmental, public health, and consumer groups have been active at the state level. They have introduced and, in some instances, passed legislation or strengthened state-level standards that have raised public awareness and addressed such priority problems such as:

  • Phthalates in toys (Washington and California).
  • Perchlorate in drinking water (Massachusetts and California).
  • Bisphenol A in products and food packaging (more than a dozen states).
  • PBDEs as flame retardants (California, Washington and other states).
  • States such as Maine and California have also developed excellent legislative efforts to promote green chemistry. These victories have begun to "filter up" to federal legislators and establish a menu of options for federal policy approaches, as well as disprove many of industry's spin about the cost or impracticality of certain policies.

Fourth, a series of scandals under the Bush Administration has dramatically revealed the near-collapse of the regulatory function of the federal government -- the Food and Drug Administration, the Consumer Product Safety Commission and the Environmental Protection Agency among others.

From the after-the-fact discovery of high levels of lead in children's jewelry and toys, to the illness of thousands of dogs and cats from pet food contaminated with melamine (and subsequent discovery of the same chemical in powdered milk), to missteps in the government's analysis of the health risks posed by bisphenol A and phthalates, these reports have galvanized public support for improvements in what is otherwise an arcane and complex topic.

Fifth, the environmental community has made strides in resolving strong differences of opinion about the best path forward for toxic chemical reform and developed a consensus position on many priorities for chemical reform legislation. The resulting consensus legislation was introduced as the Kid Safe Chemicals Act (KSCA) in the last Congress. While not perfect, the bill was notable for its support by a broad array of environmental groups. Over time, KSCA has come to be recognized as a strong starting point for reforming the Toxics Substance Control Act, the legislation that (as I noted) is all but dead.

These five factors combine to provide environmental, public health, labor, and consumer groups their best opportunity in decades to advance legislation to broadly reform existing federal law and to advance efforts at the administrative level to improve toxic chemical policy in America.

Up next: a comprehensive menu of reform.

See also:

]]> Part I: Stemming the Tide of Toxic Chemicals tag:switchboard.nrdc.org,2009:/blogs/lgreer//58.2782 2009-03-02T14:22:49Z 2009-03-17T03:59:47Z Put simply, the U.S. system for regulating toxic chemicals is a failure. Chemical companies are not required to test the toxicity of their products. They are immune from reporting critical information to the public. And, most importantly, they are able... Linda Greer Put simply, the U.S. system for regulating toxic chemicals is a failure.

Chemical companies are not required to test the toxicity of their products. They are immune from reporting critical information to the public. And, most importantly, they are able to sell their products under an "innocent until proven guilty" premise.

For nearly 10 years, U.S. chemical policy has stood still and, in many respects has actually gone backwards. But while government policy has been at a standstill, scientists have been hard at work. And our knowledge base on many chemicals, such as endocrine disruptors, has multiplied dramatically.

More science and failed policy. As a result, the case for reform of U.S. chemical policy has never been stronger.

In this case, President Obama and his new, more progressive government will not be able to fix the mess with a simple change of heart. Why? Because many problems in current policy have their origins in the fundamental weakness of the main federal law intended to comprehensively regulate the use of toxic chemicals.

This law, the Toxics Substances Control Act (TSCA), has in essence been unchanged since 1976. It was written (and has been interpreted by the courts) to set an almost insurmountably high bar for Environmental Protection Agency to get information it needs from industry on the potential risks of chemicals or to restrict their use.

For example, after working for nearly a decade to develop a rule under TSCA banning most uses of asbestos, a well known and quite notorious chemical, EPA's action was thrown out by a federal court in part for failing to demonstrate, as required under the act, that the ban was the "least burdensome" method of addressing the problem. Since that decision, TSCA has been, in many respects, a dead letter, regardless of administration.

But there is a way forward and in the coming days I will discuss NRDC's hopes and plans for chemical policy reform.

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]]> Reducing Global Mercury 21st Century Style tag:switchboard.nrdc.org,2009:/blogs/lgreer//58.2790 2009-02-24T20:38:23Z 2009-02-28T15:39:08Z This month will distinguish itself as a period of heavy international focus for NRDC's Health program. In my previous blog, I described my travel for our China project, which addresses the textile sector, one of the country's most polluting industries.... Linda Greer This month will distinguish itself as a period of heavy international focus for NRDC's Health program. In my previous blog, I described my travel for our China project, which addresses the textile sector, one of the country's most polluting industries. At the same time, we also traveled to the United Nations meeting in Nairobi, Kenya and successfully promoted the need for a globally binding treaty to reduce the use and release of mercury. That work to negotiate a treaty will now begin in earnest.

I've been thinking a lot about the differences in these two initiatives, the textile work versus the mercury work. 

The textile project is completely 21st century; I call it my Tom Friedman project.  We work with our partners around the world seamlessly by email and skype at all hours, joking about who is in pajamas drinking coffee and who has got their feet up in the living room drinking a beer.  We email PowerPoint presentations and web links during conference calls to walk through details.

 Cultural differences abound, of course, but we interact routinely just as individuals.  By the time we get to meetings, we know each other pretty well, and differences in our backgrounds are not major hurdles. In meetings we had in Hong Kong and Guangdong earlier this month, I marveled at the international nature of the participants -- representatives from the United States, England, South Africa, India and China of course, many representing corporate interests that operate from an even wider swath of countries, with experiences from Central American, Vietnam and Bangladesh.

Just this week I spoke with a Greek working for a U.K. firm who contacted my office because he'd missed our meeting in Hong Kong.  It is always a kick to see how much a group like this can actually have in common, some of it based on our technical training and knowledge of the industry I suppose, but some of it based on music or travel or just the overlap in experience in our day jobs. It definitely leads to productive meeting flow and facilitates decision making across the group. We're making great progress.

UNEP Mercury Package As It Arrived

Flash to the negotiation in Nairobi where the United Nations had dutifully sent me a large packet of background materials (see above) in a brown paper wrapper by snail mail all the way from Africa!  Who even looks at their mail to see what's in there every day at the office anymore?  Stuff that arrives via postal service can sit for days without my noticing it.  And then, reading all that in hard copy?  No key word searches to fast track the review?  Are you kidding??

 Of course, information dissemination is just the tip of the iceberg.  The meeting itself to discuss the need for a treaty, called the UNEP Governing Council meeting, is extremely formal and occurs only every two years.  Any meetings between Governing Council sessions - and they are very few and far between - are not licensed to be decision-making meetings.

Since countries are meeting only every two years, there tends to be tremendous turnover in representatives. Most people don't know each other from previous engagements, and there is a total dearth of inside jokes in this group, believe me. On top of this, many of the representatives sent to the meeting do not necessarily have any expertise in mercury, and they are always very wary of international implications of any wrong move.

Under this UNEP structure, we had exactly five days in a very formal setting with a group of mostly strangers to deliberate the value of a legally binding treaty to reduce mercury pollution across the world.  If we failed to do so in those five working days, we would have all had to wait another two years to deliberate with another group of mostly strangers some more. 

 This is "global governance" in the 21st century! Its pace makes the U.S. Congress look positively functional! And multi-national corporations like Wal-Mart look like science fiction, managing to get tens of thousands of identical white blouses manufactured across the world all at once in a patchwork of crazy country computer connections.

So, hey, United Nations: Can we not do any better?  The non-governmental organizations working on mercury have been interacting routinely by email and Skype for more than four years now, and it has worked out really well, despite time and cultural differences. 

So how about modernizing the scene for the upcoming mercury treaty negotiation?  What about if the government representatives interact starting now over email, before they lose track of each other?  Why not discuss how to run the negotiations over webinars rather than waiting until a meeting in the fall in Stockholm?  What about if you create wiki's and let the various players organize the information they think people need to move forward?  The wiki group might naturally become a team of experts from around the world, supplementing or even replacing less expert representatives of their country's interests. 

UNEP has four years to complete the mercury negotiation; it must be done by 2013.    But given the 21st century, don't you think we could find a faster and more efficient path forward?  Four years is almost 1500 days, and if we can do some work without actually being physically together, we should be able to do this in much less time. Flying to meetings in Nairobi or Stockholm or Geneva is inconvenient, environmentally unfriendly and, face it, expensive, and in 2009, most of us are used to doing a lot of work without being face-to-face for everything anyway.

]]> Going Right: A Global Mercury Treaty Defies the Odds tag:switchboard.nrdc.org,2009:/blogs/lgreer//58.2774 2009-02-21T16:16:31Z 2009-02-25T12:19:58Z In my line of work it always seems like there are 99 ways for things to go wrong and only one way for them to go right. This week, however, defying all odds, something really big went right on the... Linda Greer In my line of work it always seems like there are 99 ways for things to go wrong and only one way for them to go right. This week, however, defying all odds, something really big went right on the topic of global mercury pollution, and those of us who have been working to reduce mercury use and contamination for decades are still pinching ourselves.

The Obama Administration, less than one month old, went into its first international negotiation on an environmental matter with the stunning announcement that the U.S. supported an immediate start to negotiations for a legally binding treaty to reduce mercury. Following that opening, the administration took a leadership role in the negotiations all week. And on Friday, the world walked away with an extraordinary agreement to begin negotiations (while taking steps to deliver real-world reductions at the same time), all to be completed by 2013.

As the New York Times noted in today's papers;

The United States resistance to binding international controls on mercury, a potent neurotoxin, evaporated at a United Nations-sponsored meeting in Nairobi this week, as 140 nations agreed Friday to draft a treaty to control mercury releases into the atmosphere. Most human-produced mercury emissions come from power plants and small-scale gold mining. The agreement calls for negotiations to begin in 2010 and a final draft to be completed by 2013. Susan Keane, a policy analyst with the Natural Resources Defense Council, said that Washington's about-face changed the dynamics of the conference, helping bring around other resistant states, notably China, whose mercury emissions dwarf those of any other country.

For more than five years, progress on mercury pollution, which requires coordinated reductions in use around the world, has been at a standstill, largely because of unyielding opposition of the Bush Administration. Opposition to doing something proactive for environmental health protection. Opposition to setting a precedent for mercury control that they themselves had no interest in meeting in our own country. And most of all, opposition to collaboration and negotiation in a global government framework of any sort, for fear of the precedent success could create for global warming negotiations.

Despite the best efforts of an international coalition of non-governmental organizations called the Zero Mercury Working Group (of which we are a part), excellent background studies, and the support of all of Europe and much of the developing world, we spent five years getting absolutely nowhere on this topic thanks to the Bush Administation's stubborn opposition.

The fur had to really fly for the U.S. to change its position so quickly. That's where the "ninety-nine things that could go wrong" came in. We thought that given the tight time constraints, the most we could hope for was a lack of vehement opposition to a treaty proposed by European governments. However, as my colleague Susan Keane reported from the negotiations, what we got was good old fashioned US leadership that charted a new course on mercury protections around the world, setting a strong example to influence others to do the same.

Barak Obama already had a great track record on mercury. He and he alone reached out to us when he was the junior Senator from Illinois, interested in doing something meaningful on mercury pollution when he read an excellent series on the problem that had appeared in the Chicago Tribune. And the office's initial inquiry to us about how the Senator could help solve this problem was just the beginning; they reached across the aisle to Alaska's Lisa Murkowski to co-sponsor a bill that would ban the export of surplus mercury from the U.S. into global commerce, thereby reducing the supply glut that kept prices low and sparked demand for the toxic metal in industries in the industrial world. The mercury export ban passed the U.S. Congress in the fall of 2008, signed into law at the end of the Bush term.

Despite the positive start and new past leadership, however, I've worked in D.C. a long time, and there have been issues I've worked on where progress has been depressingl slow through both democratic and republican administrations. The Obama slogan "Change we can believe in" had a certain ring to it, but I was feeling a bit cynical about what might really be possible.

Then this. I'm here to tell you: This was the real deal, a decisive shift in position on a topic of real impact , and not one that was receiving significant media attention or scrutiny in advance. The State Department staff, with the nod from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, worked with EPA staff, with the nod from Administrator Lisa Jackson, and got the job done.

The result: I'm in awe. Thanks you guys! And we'll be with you every step of the way in the upcoming negotiation, partnered through our Zero Mercury Working group with NGOs around the world to make a great and effective treaty happen.

 

]]> Textiles in China: Looking Differently at the Blue Jeans Resting in Your Closet tag:switchboard.nrdc.org,2009:/blogs/lgreer//58.2736 2009-02-17T20:00:04Z 2009-02-21T15:24:02Z Linda Greer I've just finished four intensive days of work on our textile project in China.

Most people haven’t thought much about the environmental impact of the fashion industry but believe me, if you could see what I see every time I come here, the white blouse or blue jeans resting quietly in your closet would never seem the same again. 

Huge vats of boiling dyes, steam belching out of every pipe, water of every color in puddles across the factories, dye “kitchens” where color recipes are measured out that look like a kindergarten art project gone wild. The volume of colored fabric coming out the other end boggles the mind. So many of these factories, so much stuff!  How in the world do we consume all this fabric?

We started on this project a little more than a year ago, taking the Health program at NRDC international.  Simply put, thanks to the vast globalization of industry, it was clear that if we planned to remain “the earth’s best defense” here at NRDC, we needed to follow the pounds of pollutants to their source, which was abroad.

NRDC new Beijing office was interested in addressing pollution problems as well as energy efficiency opportunities in industry, and so they welcomed our work.  After some time-consuming data collection and lots of introductory meetings to find good partners, we settled on a first initiative focused on the textile sector, which distinguished itself as one of the biggest polluting sectors in China, also one that used a lot of energy and consumed a lot of water.  

Big environmental footprint, big potential impact.  We’re seeking opportunities to improve production processes with energy efficiency, water conservation, and materials efficiency approaches, with the idea that these initiatives will save the factory money while protecting the environment at the same time.  Because Chinese government environmental authorities are very weak, improvements that save money seem like the most promising approach to the problem, at least theoretically self-reinforcing for the factory.  Hopefully these measures will be implemented and sustainable without an outside “stick.”

One of the things I love best about this project is how culturally cross-cutting it is.  I am usually the only American in the room unless I’m also traveling with my project partner Susan Keane from the DC office.

The factory manager is of course Chinese, often a person who started life as a tailor, without any formal education beyond a high school level.  No licensed engineers, no Harvard business school graduates running these plants, just guys who started small, were good entrepreneurs, worked real hard and got a little lucky.

Almost always it is a family business, sometimes at this point it is the son who is running the show (very very rarely the daughter by the way), sometimes still the dad.  China has just industrialized so quickly that there are more business opportunities than people trained at a university level to lead them.  And so the challenge for us is to communicate well about very technical concepts across a cultural and educational gap the size of the Grand Canyon.

Of course who should be the perfect person for this job but our international consultant, Bas Kothuis of BECO, who happens to be a South African working for a Dutch firm.  No joke, what a kick.  We put out a Request for Proposal for this work and his company submitted the best proposal to help us.  This week, I sat there shaking my head during our “kick off meeting” with two factory managers, watching him reach out sentence by translated sentence, explaining what we were all about, what wanted to do, and how we wanted to do it. 

Miraculously, we connected well, the foreign American from an environmental advocacy organization (what textile factory manager in china has ever heard of an NGO!?  I don’t even explain what I really do for a living anymore, just stick with the “internal expert” tag) and the Dutch engineer with his Powerpoint presentation.

The factory staff went from wary to warm. You could see the light bulb go off by the looks on their faces, when they realized the possible cost savings associated with what we wanted to explore for them, and they pressed us for details for some of our suggestions.  Next week our expert will be on the floor of their factories, investigating various nooks and crannies, finding their biggest problems, and applying internationally relevant experience to solutions we can offer for improvement.

Following this first stage of audits, the plan is to develop a practical list of no more than ten “best practices” for the textile industry, easy fixes that cost little or no money that will substantially reduce the footprint of these operations at typical factories across the country.

We will then work with multi-national apparel retailers and brands to spread the word about these opportunities through workshops and provincial government meetings of the right players.  We’ll also work with corporations to develop supply chain policies that reward factories who have undertaken these improvements, via preferred supplier lists and other carrots.

That’s the plan in place to begin to stem the tide of toxic chemicals here in the big country of China.  I’ll keep you up to date as the project goes forward.

 

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