The Textile Industry and Sustainable Development: A Holt–Winters Forecasting Investigation for the Eastern European Area

Dorel Paraschiv,Radu Petrariu,Cristiana Tudor

doi:10.3390/su7021280

Dorel Paraschiv, Radu Petrariu + Show 1 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/su7021280

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Journal: Sustainability	Publication Date: Jan 26, 2015
Citations: 51	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: Bucharest University of Economic Studies

Abstract

To achieve sustainable development, massive changes towards fostering a clean and pollution-reducing industrial sector are quintessential. The textile industry has been one of the main contributors to water pollution all over the world, causing more than 20% of the registered levels of water pollution in countries like Turkey, Indonesia and China (among the G20 group of countries) and also in Romania and Bulgaria (in the Eastern European area), with even more than 44% in Macedonia. Given the controversy created by the textile industry’s contribution to pollution at a global level and also the need to diminish pollution in order to promote sustainable development, this paper comparatively investigates the contribution of the textile industry to the water pollution across Central and Eastern European countries, as well as developed countries. In addition, we employ the Holt–Winters model to forecast the trend of the total emissions of organic water pollutants, as well as of the textile industry’s contribution to pollution for the top polluters in Eastern Europe, i.e., Poland and Romania. According to our estimates, both countries are headed towards complete elimination of pollution caused by the textile industry and, hence, toward a more sustainable industrial sector, as Greenpeace intended with the release of its 2011 reports.

Highlights

According to the literature, sustainable development is “socially responsible economic development”that protects “the resource base and the environment for the benefit of future generations”
The good news is that compared to the levels achieved in 1990, most Eastern European countries managed to decrease water pollution caused by the textile industry
Textile industry (% of total BOD emissions) across. For both Romania and Poland, we make a forecast for the evolution of the two pollution indicators employed in this research, i.e., total emissions of organic water pollutants and water pollution caused by the textile industry over the ten years

Summary

Introduction

Sustainable development is “socially responsible economic development”that protects “the resource base and the environment for the benefit of future generations”. In 2011, Greenpeace made accusations against several global brands in the fashion industry [1,2], such as Nike, Adidas, Puma, Lacoste, GAP and H & M, who use providers whose activities seriously pollute the environment in China. The report titled “Dirty Laundry”, published by Greenpeace, shows that a long list of companies active in the field of fashion has commercial links with suppliers in China. The activity of these suppliers led to the discharge of chemical substances in the Yangtze and Pearl rivers, impacting the immune system function and the functioning of hormones in humans. Dyeing constitutes a important problem in this respect, as dye houses in India and China are notorious for exhausting local water supplies, but for dumping untreated wastewater into local streams and rivers

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