Li, Y.; Lu, L.; Tan, Y.; Wang, L.; Shen, M. Decoupling Water Consumption and Environmental Impact on Textile Industry by Using Water Footprint Method: A Case Study in China. Water 2017, 9, 124, doi:10.3390/w9020124.
Li, Y.; Lu, L.; Tan, Y.; Wang, L.; Shen, M. Decoupling Water Consumption and Environmental Impact on Textile Industry by Using Water Footprint Method: A Case Study in China. Water 2017, 9, 124, doi:10.3390/w9020124.
Li, Y.; Lu, L.; Tan, Y.; Wang, L.; Shen, M. Decoupling Water Consumption and Environmental Impact on Textile Industry by Using Water Footprint Method: A Case Study in China. Water 2017, 9, 124, doi:10.3390/w9020124.
Li, Y.; Lu, L.; Tan, Y.; Wang, L.; Shen, M. Decoupling Water Consumption and Environmental Impact on Textile Industry by Using Water Footprint Method: A Case Study in China. Water 2017, 9, 124, doi:10.3390/w9020124.
Abstract
The rapid development of China’s textile industry leads to consumption and pollution of large volumes of water. Therefore, the textile industry has been the focus of water conservation and waste reduction in China’s 13th Five-Year Plan (2016–2020). The premise of sustainable development is to achieve decoupling of economic growth from water consumption and wastewater discharge. In this work, changes in blue water (water consumption), grey water (water pollutants), and water footprints of the textile industry from 2001 to 2014 were calculated. The relationship between water footprint and economic growth was then examined using the Tapio decoupling model. Furthermore, factors influencing water footprint were determined through logarithmic mean Divisia index (LMDI) method. Results show that the water footprint of China’s textile industry has strongly decoupled for five years (2002, 2006, 2008, 2011, and 2013) and weakly decoupled for four years (2002, 2007, 2009, and 2010). A decoupling trend occurred during 2001–2014, but a steady stage of decoupling has not been achieved yet. Based on the decomposition analysis, the total water footprint is mainly increased by production scale and inhibited by the technology. In addition, the effect of industrial structure adjustment is relatively weak.
Keywords
textile industry; water footprint; economic growth; decoupling; decomposition
Subject
Business, Economics and Management, Economics
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
