Exploring the role of Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) system in delivering environmental sustainability within the textile industry of Bangladesh

The textile industry is one of the fastest growing industries around the globe. It occupies a prominent position in the economy of Bangladesh through its significant share of workforce and establishments within the manufacturing sector of the country. Although, for a developing country like Bangladesh, such rapid industrial growth often comes at the price of environmental degradation. A comprehensive research on role of EIA in addressing the environmental sustainability for this key industry in Bangladesh is long due . This study aims in doing so by evaluating the system requirements of EIA for textile industry and its practice at pre and post decision stage. The author has performed extensive literature review on the subject matter for developing the framework of analysis for this research, document analysis on EISs from textile units of the country, face to face interview with the stakeholders and visited case study textile units to understand their post decision performance. The evaluation identified deficiencies within the EIA system requirements for textile industry in Bangladesh. The practice appeared even poorer. Therefore, the major recommendations by author include reforming existing legislation; strengthening administrative arrangements; incorporating sectoral considerations within key components of the EIA system (e.g., guideline on EIA methodology, contents of EIS, EIS review, implementation monitoring); promoting transparency, accountability and quality control by establishing legal status of the stages of EIA and public involvement, measurers promised in EIS and provision of accreditation for EIA consultants, This research can simultaneously contribute to academia, policy making and EIA practice. First, the framework of analysis can be adopted for other comprehensive sectoral EIA studies. Then, the EIS review package can be readily used by Department of Environment (DoE), Bangladesh to review EIA reports from textile industry. Information in this research can also prove helpful to the policy makers while enhancing and reforming the institutional requirements for the EIA system focussing on key sectors like textile. The researcher also understands that there is a scope to extend such study to the informal textile units of this country. However, limited data on that segment of textile industry in Bangladesh might make such research challenging

An aesthetic for sustainable interactions in product-service systems?

Copyright @ 2012 Greenleaf PublishingEco-efficient Product-Service System (PSS) innovations represent a promising approach to sustainability. However the application of this concept is still very limited because its implementation and diffusion is hindered by several barriers (cultural, corporate and regulative ones). The paper investigates the barriers that affect the attractiveness and acceptation of eco-efficient PSS alternatives, and opens the debate on the aesthetic of eco-efficient PSS, and the way in which aesthetic could enhance some specific inner qualities of this kinds of innovations. Integrating insights from semiotics, the paper outlines some first research hypothesis on how the aesthetic elements of an eco-efficient PSS could facilitate user attraction, acceptation and satisfaction

Sustainable Textile Marketing

We know that sustainability has become an important topic in every aspect of life. The textile, fashion, and material industries must also be sustainable, which could be imparted in their development, production, or even marketing. The textile industry has a huge market, as clothing is arguably the most important human need after food. Recently, this industry has been labeled as a polluting industry, a label that could be overcome by the proper development of textile goods and careful marketing strategies. There are specific roles that government, entrepreneurs, and even universities can play in properly educating people to make the textile industry cleaner and greener. Several journals focus only on one of the aspects of this key problem, i.e., the production of sustainable materials, textile education, or textile marketing. However, herein, we strive to bring different areas together on one platform to cover different aspects, i.e., production, policy, education, and marketing related to textile fashion and textile materials

Sustainability in design: now! Challenges and opportunities for design research, education and practice in the XXI century

Copyright @ 2010 Greenleaf PublicationsLeNS project funded by the Asia Link Programme, EuropeAid, European Commission

Design revolutions: IASDR 2019 Conference Proceedings. Volume 2: Living, Making, Value

In September 2019 Manchester School of Art at Manchester Metropolitan University was honoured to host the bi-annual conference of the International Association of Societies of Design Research (IASDR) under the unifying theme of DESIGN REVOLUTIONS. This was the first time the conference had been held in the UK. Through key research themes across nine conference tracks – Change, Learning, Living, Making, People, Technology, Thinking, Value and Voices – the conference opened up compelling, meaningful and radical dialogue of the role of design in addressing societal and organisational challenges. This Volume 2 includes papers from Living, Making and Value tracks of the conference

The Usefulness of a Self-Assessment Approach Based on a Business Excellence Model: Case Studies of Textile and Garment Enterprises in Vietnam

Since Vietnam became an official member of WTO in 2006, enterprises need to pay attention and invest in their management capacities in order to build robust strategies and improve their competitive advantage. The application of self-assessment (SA), an advanced management tool, based on a business excellence model (BEM) has been recognised as improving organisational performance by providing a referenced framework and a common language to direct organisations’ focus on improvement and to assist them to deliver both financial and nonfinancial performance enhancement. This study focuses on the investigation of BEM-based selfassessment experiences of two Vietnamese enterprises. The two case study companies, both in the garment and textile industry, undertook SA using a simple EFQM questionnaire tool. Subsequently, this study used semi-structured interviews with senior managers in order to gather data evaluating the benefits of SA to the companies and to identify factors influencing the success of the implementations. Template analysis and Nvivo software were used for the data analysis. Findings provide several insights into how SA outcomes benefit Vietnamese enterprises. Firstly, out of six intended benefits of this SA tool identified in the literature, managers strongly confirmed only one — the benefit of helping them to identify their current position and to determine future directions and priorities — as being useful in improving company performance. Two additional benefits were confirmed relating to the use of SA in identifying the company’s strengths and weaknesses and in enhancing organisational learning and awareness. In relation to factors influencing the success of implementation, several were identified as being crucial: a lack of scorer understanding of SA and BEM knowledge; a risk of emphasis on high scores; and the unique ‘encouraging scoring’ style in Vietnam. Significantly, training was regarded as crucial in overcoming these difficulties, and was as important to managers as top level commitment for successful SA. The research confirms that SA is useful for Vietnamese companies in enabling benefits which should enhance performance. However, training is crucial in overcoming implementation issues which may impact on success. Whilst benchmarking is normally closely associated with SA and BEM, it had limited relevance in the case companies due to the prevalence of high-scoring, which limited the usefulness of comparisons, and the current low levels of comparative data available in Vietnam

How Sustainable Fashion Brands Communicate with Online Customers in Comparison with Fast Fashion Brands

Sustainability in the fashion industry is a very debatable concept as this industry is commonly known for being unsustainable due to environmental, social, economic, and supply chain issues. As the fashion industry is increasingly being held responsible for its environmental and social impacts, there are growing concerns regarding lack of sustainability practices, the transparency of the sustainable efforts of fashion brands, and discrepancy between people’s attitude and behaviour towards sustainability (which includes the purchasing of sustainable products). This study two aims: 1) explore how fashion brands communicate the sustainability attributes of their products with their online customers and 2) compare the communication of sustainability of ‘fast fashion’ versus ‘sustainable fashion’ brands. For this purpose, data from 400 items from the online websites of 40 sustainable fashion and fast fashion brands were selected using an e-mystery shopping technique. The selected items covered numerous fashion categories (e.g., dresses, tops, bottoms, footwear, and accessories) and various textiles. Analysis of this data showed that over half of sustainable fashion brand items had at least one ecolabel, with about 92% of these ecolabels being from external third-party certifications. In contrast, only 8% of fast fashion items referred to ecolabels, with three-quarters of these ecolabels being internal to the organization. Additionally, it was shown that sustainable fashion items had an average price point that was 63% higher in comparison to fast fashion brands. Although sustainability related features were communicated by the sustainable fashion brands significantly more than fast fashion brands, sustainable fashion brands can improve their sustainability communications by centring their descriptions more around these features. The communication of labor working conditions was previously identified as critical information that affects a consumer’s intent towards a sustainable purchase. The disclosure of manufacturing location could satisfy the need for this information, which was missing from a significant portion of the collected data (including sustainable and fast fashion brands’ items). With respect to the extant literature on the intersection of sustainable fashion and fast fashion, the results of this thesis will provide an important baseline for understanding the current message framing and degree of transparency regarding the sustainability attributes of a product at the point of purchase. Further contributions will be made in terms of developing and testing a novel approach to measuring sustainability attributes through the application of e-mystery shopping

Achieving the Circular Economy

Urbanisation and climate change are pushing cities to find novel pathways leading to a sustainable future. The urban context may be viewed as a new experimentation space to accelerate the transition to a circular economy. Urban symbiosis and the circular economy are emerging concepts attracting more and more attention within the urban context. Moreover, new business models are emerging around sharing and peer-to-peer practices, which are challenging existing roles of actors in society. These developments are having an important impact on the flows of resources and the use of the city infrastructure, and each research area has taken a different perspective in the analysis of such impacts. This Special Issue aims to explore what a “circular city” could constitute and how and why cities engage in circularity. This Special Issue includes seven high-quality papers on the theories and practices of circular cities. Actors, concepts, methods, tools, the barriers to and enablers of circular cities are discussed and a solid base and inspiration for the future development of circular cities are provided