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Indonesia's Textile Industry Strives to Go Green Amid Chinese Competition
Green Technology Featured Articles
March 05, 2013

Indonesia's Textile Industry Strives to Go Green Amid Chinese Competition

By Cheryl Kaften
TMCnet Contributor

In Indonesia, a growing market for low-priced Chinese textiles is making it difficult for domestic manufacturers to spend money on making their factories eco-friendly. They’re being forced to choose between a better environment and their bottom lines.


The textile industry is one of Indonesia’s oldest and most important sectors in terms of employment and economic contribution. It still shows huge economic potential—representing fully 11 percent of the nation’s total industrial workforce.

But the share of imported textiles from China is increasing. Figures from the Indonesia Ministry of Trade show that China accounted for nearly 50 percent—or $45.1 million—of total garment imports in 2010 alone.

The Indonesian Ministry of Environment has been encouraging the textile industry to become environment-friendly since 2000, Arif Wibowo, deputy head of Environment-Friendly Technology Standardization, said on the sidelines of a recent workshop on the Textile Industry and Eco-Labeling in Surakarta.

As reported in the heraldonline.com, Wibowo said the lack of commitment from top executives is hindering the transition of Indonesian textile industry into clean and green industry. He noted that being eco-friendly would mean saving water and energy, and recycling the waste generated in manufacturing, as well as reducing the greenhouse effect.

Speaking at the same event, Liliek Setiawan, head of Indonesian Textile Association (API)-Central Java, said the high cost of investment is a major hurdle in implementing environment-friendly technologies in the textile industry, in the midst of dwindling profit margins.

The Chinese textile industry, he said, registered the highest growth in the world, but the race to decrease production cost to the minimum has resulted in damage to environment and pollution of water and air, which have reached alarming levels.

The Indonesian textile industry is also growing at high rate, and should consider using green technologies to avoid a China-like scenario, Setiawan noted. However, the transition to environment-friendly production processes is not easy, he said, urging the government to provide incentives to companies that implement them.




Edited by Braden Becker


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