Search Results for: Environmental health

 Chinese consumers are displaying an increasingly keen interest in sustainable fashion, being aware from personal experience that pollution can have a disastrous impact not only on the overall environment but also on their health. A Chinese University of Hong Kong report in 2018, for instance, concluded air pollution caused an average 1.1 million premature deaths in China.…

The Covid-19 pandemic has been a disruptive force across the clothing and textile industry, and it has affected consumer taste as well as shaking up supply chains, notably in home textiles, which are increasingly finished by digital printing.

With changes in demand proving very fluid because of lockdown lives lived at home, and an increase in underlying personal stress, digital printing designs have sought to tap a need for feelings of wellness and calm.…

With moves to sustainability conformity strengthening across the textile industry, rules protecting consumers and finishing workers, as well as the environment, are strengthening, notably to reduce textile dye allergies. Dye producers Colorifix, from Norwich, East Anglia, England, says this has led to “biology replacing chemistry” in dye production, enabling finishers to market products as provide positive health benefits not just preventing allergic reactions.…

Companies in Japan that export paint and coatings and related chemicals ingredients to Russia and Belarus may face a trade ban if those items have been classed as ‘advanced goods’ under a May 20 amendment to Japan’s Export Trade Control Order.…

The European Financial Reporting Advisory Group (EFRAG) has released its first full set of final draft sustainability reporting standards for the European Union (EU) for public consultation. EFRAG has been charged with developing standards expected to become compulsory under a proposed EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive.…

Malawi’s National Council for Higher Education (NCHE) has suspended programmes at a Catholic university, its first punitive action on HE standards since being accused of allowing sub-par teaching in the country’s tertiary education sector,

The regulator’s target has been DMI-St John the Baptist University, a Catholic university, whose main campus is in Mangochi, in southern Malawi, with branches in the capital, Lilongwe, and Blantyre, the country’s largest commercial centre.…

Tunisia’s National Tobacco and Matches Board has adopted a new strategy to achieve self-sufficiency in leaf supplies for the north African country’s tobacco manufacturing sector, doubling the number of growers and the land under production.

The goal of the board (RNTA – Regie Nationale des Tabacs et des Allumettes) is to reduce tobacco product and leaf imports, increasing exports of the same to European and other North African and Middle East countries.…

Tobacco companies are closely watching the impact of Germany’s Supply Chain Law, taking effect in 2023, the first time German companies have been given legal responsibility to respect human rights in global supply chains. Industry observers predict there will be a considerable need for additional compliance efforts by tobacco producers and traders as a result.…

Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine has disrupted the supplies of food, especially cereals, to major halal food markets, with Ukraine and Russia togethering controlling around 30% of the global wheat trade. The military action, which the UN said on April 17 had killed 2,072 civilians, has put the Middle East and North Africa in a tight position over food supplies, especially given the region’s economies have been weakened by the Covid-19 crisis.…

Bangladesh is emerging as a major supplier for high-value suits in Europe and the US, taking advantage of the disruption faced by manufacturers in China, Vietnam, and Ethiopia during the Covid-19 pandemic. While Bangladesh faced its own supply chain and production disruption, China’s tough response to the pandemic has harmed its clothing production, Vietnam’s apparel sector has encountered labour shortages and Ethiopia’s Covid-19 woes have been worsened by civil war.…