The textile chemical industry has made real progress in cleaner production. Low-temperature scouring, enzymatic bio-processing, and short-process dyeing are now widely adopted. Yet when you zoom out to the entire wet processing line, the total energy and wastewater reduction is far less than expected.
The issue is not technology—it is architecture.
Background
Industry data shows that over the past five years, the adoption rate of low-temperature pretreatment in printing and dyeing mills rose from 18% to 47%, and enzymatic desizing surpassed 30%. Those are impressive numbers. Yet the average annual decline in comprehensive energy consumption per unit product among the same mills was only 1.2%, and the rate of COD reduction in wastewater slowed notably after 2023.
What this means: the benefits of individual technologies are being eroded by poor process integration. A fabric leaving a low-temperature scouring bath enters a high-temperature wash stage, wasting the thermal gradient. Enzyme desizing effluent, lacking dedicated recovery piping, is dumped into a mixed wastewater stream. Each stage is locally optimized, but the system as a whole is far from globally optimal.
A bigger concern is the trend toward "universal" chemical recipes. Many suppliers now offer one-stop chemical packages claiming to cover everything from desizing to mercerizing. In lab trials such recipes may work, but on continuous production lines, different stages have vastly different pH, temperature, and liquor ratio requirements. One recipe often leads to overdosing or underperformance at a critical step, increasing the burden on subsequent washing.
Industry Impact
Fragmented process architecture is dragging down three areas.
First, cost. Wastewater treatment chemical consumption and energy use are positively correlated—every 100 mg/L increase in COD raises treatment costs by 8-12%. When upstream chemical residues are amplified by universal recipes, downstream treatment facilities must use more chemicals and energy to compensate. Mills in concentrated printing and dyeing zones like Keqiao (Shaoxing) and Shengze (Jiangsu) reported that integrated wastewater treatment costs rose 6-9% year-on-year in 2024, a significant portion attributable to ineffective chemical input from upstream stages.
Second, procurement decisions. Buyers used to select suppliers based on single-chemical performance and price. Now, major apparel brands and fabric buyers increasingly demand mills provide a "full-process chemical management plan"—data on chemical usage, energy consumption, and wastewater emissions from desizing to finishing. Suppliers who only sell individual products and cannot provide system-level data are being excluded from approved lists.
Third, technology lock-in. Once a mill accepts a supplier's universal recipe, it often becomes locked into equipment modifications and process parameters specific to that recipe, making future switching costly. This not only stifles the introduction of new technologies but also homogenizes the decarbonization path of the entire wet processing industry, lacking differentiated solutions for different fiber types, color depths, and fastness requirements.