Industrial Pollution

China’s top environmental watchdog has rejected a request to publish findings of a high-profile national survey on soil pollution, citing "state secrecy". It is a decision which both legal and environmental experts are calling irresponsible. With public health at risk – as contaminated land jeopardizes food safety and can cause cancer or other health problems for local residents – critics are asking just what, in its five-year study into ground contamination, the Ministry of Environmental Protection has to hide.

Dozens of China’s political leaders, business executives and academics attended a round table conference aimed at developing a green and circular economy for the country’s garment industry this week in Beijing.

The trial of two environmental inspectors, charged with dereliction of duty and bribery over the pollution of drinking water for 1.5 million, has begun in Liuzhou, southern China.

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has committed a loan of USD250 to rehabilitate the fifth largest freshwater lake in China.

A damning new study on the global luxury leather industry has been released by NGO Human Rights Watch which claims workers in many leather tanneries in the Hazaribagh neighborhood of Dhaka, the Bangladesh capital, including children as young as 11, become ill because of exposure to hazardous chemicals and are injured in horrific workplace accidents. Released last week, the study says that the tanneries, which export hundreds of millions of dollars in leather for luxury goods throughout the world, are also spewing pollutants into surrounding communities.