Superbacteria Could Soon Be Eating China's Factory Waste
- Hong Kong research part of effort to clean up China’s water
- Textile industry is China’s No.3 producer of waste water
Sludge samples at the research laboratory in the Hong Kong Science Park.
Photographer: Anthony Kwan/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
In a Hong Kong laboratory, researchers are working with one of the world’s biggest cloth makers to improve its production process using a special ingredient: bacteria.
TAL Apparel Ltd., which has factories in mainland China and Southeast Asia, has teamed up with City University to identify bacteria that can clean up more efficiently the vast quantities of waste water the textile industry produces. It’s one of hundreds of efforts by China’s private and state-owned companies to fix a problem that could end up rewriting the playbook of the global fashion industry.