Water environmental stress, rebound effect, and economic growth of China’s textile industry

PeerJ

article

Yi Li¹  Jie Shen⁴  Linyi Lu⁴  Yan Luo¹  Laili Wang¹  Manhong Shen⁶ 

[1] Fashion School, Zhejiang Sci-Tech University;Clothing Engineering Research Center of Zhejiang Province, Zhejiang Sci-Tech University;Silk and Fashion Culture Research Center of Zhejiang Province, Zhejiang Sci-Tech University;School of Economics and Management, Zhejiang Sci-Tech University;Fashion School, Donghua University;School of Business, Ningbo University

关键词: Textile industry;    Wastewater discharge;    Water environmental stress;    Rebound effect;    COD discharge;    Economic growth;    Decoupling;   

DOI  :  10.7717/peerj.5112

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: Inra

【 摘 要 】

The rapid development of China’s textile industry (TI) has led to severe water environmental stress. Water environmental stress of China’s TI mainly comes from large quantities of discharged wastewater and chemical oxygen demand (COD). The sustainable development of the TI is realized to achieve the decoupling between economic growth and water environmental stress. This study analyzes the decoupling elasticity results from wastewater discharge and COD discharge, respectively. Decoupling results show that TI’s wastewater has strong decoupling from economic growth for three years (2002, 2013–2014) while COD has strong decoupling for six years (2002–2003, 2008, 2010, 2013–2014). The paper further calculates the decoupling elasticity results of the TI’s three sub-sectors (manufacture of textile sector, manufacture of textile wearing and apparel sector, and manufacture of chemical fibers (MCF) sector), and calculates the factors that affect wastewater discharge. The decrement and rebound effects of wastewater discharge are analyzed based on calculated results. Decomposition results show that the scale factor is the most significant contributor to wastewater discharge, the intensity factor inhibits wastewater discharge, and the effect of the structure factor is not evident. The decrement effect of TI increases yearly, but the rebound effect shows that the absolute amount of wastewater discharge also increases. The rebound effect has declined since 2012. In the three sub-sectors, MCF’s decrement effect is the strongest, and its rebound effect is the weakest, which indicate that MCF is the biggest contributor to the discharge reduction of China’s TI.

【 授权许可】

CC BY