Top management hindering efforts to green Indonesian textile industry

A lack of commitment from top executives is hindering the transition of Indonesian textile industry into clean and green industry, according to a senior government official.

Arif Wibowo, deputy head of environment-friendly technology standardization in the Ministry of Environment, who was speaking at a workshop on Textile Industry and Eco-labeling in Surakarta, said the Indonesian Ministry of Environment has been encouraging the textile industry to become more environmentally friendly since 2000.

He said being environment-friendly would see the textile industry save a lot of water and energy by recycling the waste generated and reducing the greenhouse effect.

Liliek Setiawan, the head of Indonesian Textile Association in 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.

He said the Chinese textile industry 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 it should consider using green technologies to avoid a China-like scenario, Setiawan said.

However, the transition to environment-friendly production processes is not easy, and he urged the Government to provide incentives to companies to implement such processes.