Bacteria: improving the cloth-making process and cleaning water
Hong Kong/Zurich — In a Hong Kong laboratory, researchers are working with one of the world’s biggest cloth makers to improve its production process using a special ingredient: bacteria. TAL Apparel, which has factories in mainland China and Southeast Asia, has teamed up with City University [of Hong Kong] to identify bacteria that can clean up the vast quantities of waste water the textile industry produces more efficiently. It’s one of hundreds of efforts by China’s private and state-owned companies to fix a problem that could end up rewriting the playbook of the global fashion industry. After decades of almost unbridled industrial growth that left China with a legacy of rampant pollution, shrinking aquifers and soaring water prices, the government is cracking down on big industrial users, and the textile industry is in the front line. Cloth-making ranks third in China for the amount of waste water it discharges — 3-billion tonnes a year — after chemicals and paper, according to a...
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