Local governments are now requiring high-polluting industries to use wastewater reduction and processing systems, in-house or via third parties, and many monitor compliance actively. The environmental protection bureau in Guangdong province, for instance, implements on-site inspections twice a year. A factory's operations have to meet environmental standards or face closure. The bureau in the Guangdong district of Shunde, one of the main denim production centers in China, conducts random inspections one or two times a month. Factories that fail evaluations three times are forced to stop operations.

 

To comply with the stricter regulations, suppliers are purchasing advanced machinery that can maximize water usage, resulting in less wastage. Recycling is being practiced and financially viable enterprises are installing in-house facilities for processing wastewater. Others use community water-treatment facilities to process the spent water.

 

In the highly polluting denim industry, a few large companies have purchased washing facilities worth $500,000 from Spain. This equipment does not use water and chemical agents, thereby reducing washing costs up to 90 percent.

 

Leather-processing factories, which are as polluting as their denim counterparts, have similar practices in place. One of the major leather companies in Xinji, Hebei province, Hebei Dongming Bright Leather Co. Ltd is using local overhead rotary drum machines. These units are 50 percent less expensive than imported versions.

 

Compared with regular side-loading machines, they have a higher load capacity. This means more leather can be processed in each batch, resulting in lower water use. Processing a ton of raw leather to wet blue via the overhead drum yields approximately 35 tons of wastewater, 45 to 60 tons less than what side loaders give out.

 

Additionally, leather makers in Xinji separate the chrome tanning liquid and lime liquor from the wastewater for recycling. The rest is processed in-house or sent to water-treatment facilities.