Life Cycle Management in the Textile Sector a Study of Up-streram Requirements on Environment, Working Environment, Child Labour, Pesticides and Organic Grown Cotton

The scope of the study has been to investigate the experiences of Danish enterprises setting requirements upstream the textile supply chain. The project has examined the experiences setting requirements, obtaining improvements and getting documentation for this in relation to the following aspects: environment, working environment, child labour, use of pesticides in the cotton growing, and use of organic cotton. On the basis of the gathered experiences the team has formulated ideas minimising the barriers and made recommendations for further actions. Focussing on different aspects as environment, working environment, child labour, use of pesticides and use of organic grown cotton the project have resulted in a large number of findings divided on the different aspects. However, the following common findings should be mentioned: - International trade quota and tariffs and changes in currency exchange rates used for import and export are influencing heavily on the enterprises' choice of suppliers and set constraints for their ability to set requirements - Enterprises have different reasons to start working with an aspect: Public regulation, public debate, market opportunities and enterprises' own values. The same enterprise might have different reasons to start working within different aspects - Small and medium size enterprises (SME's) seem to prefer long-term relations to their suppliers. In general they seem to prefer to find solutions in co-operation with their supplier when requirements are to be met rather than finding a new supplier - There is no uniform way of setting and managing requirements. The enterprises often use existing co-operation patterns to include new requirements on environment, working environment or child labour - The enterprises find it easier to set requirements if formalised guidelines or criteria within an aspect are already developed and recognised by authorities, international institutions or others. On the other hand, different guidelines and criteria within an aspect might give problems, e.g. when a supplier wants to transfer recognition from one supply chain to another - Even SME's can make themselves attractive as customers to other, and even bigger enterprises, and make them fulfil requirements on environment or similar aspects. Suppliers might see the enterprise's requirements as future general customer requirements, suppliers might get new chemicals tested under real-life conditions or suppliers might get access to Danish know-how.