China's "textile town" Shaoxing County is set to reduce its annual textile printing and dyeing capacity by 710 million meters of textile before September 15, in a bid to save energy and cut emissions, sources with the county government said Wednesday.

The reduction is about 5 percent of the current capacity of the county, which is located in east China's Zhejiang Province.

The local government has closed down 600 sets of illegal and outdated textile printing and dyeing facilities in 40 companies, said Sun Zhongfu, head of Economy and Trade Bureau of Shaoxing County.

"We are going to reduce the number of textile printing and dyeing companies from 200 to 100, and reduce the output of printed and dyed fabrics from 15.6 billion to 10 billion meters per year," said Sun.

Shaoxing County, which accounts for one third of China's total annual production of printed and dyed fabrics, is famed as "a city built upon cloth."

However, the energy consumption of Shaoxing County is nearly twice the average of Zhejiang Province and the COD (chemical oxygen demand) discharge is three times the provincial average. COD is a major indicator for concentration of organic pollutants in sewage water.

As estimated by local environmental protection department of the county, the total water used up in textile dyeing amounted to 200 million tonnes last year. The industry also generates a large quantity of sewage water with a high density of organic pollutants every year. As for the pollutants concentration, every one liter of such sewage discharged by Shaoxing's textile printing and dyeing companies contains 1,000 mg of COD on average.

Sun Yunyao, head of Shaoxing County, said,"Apart from reducing the traditional printing and dyeing capacity to protect the environment, we should work to promote the upgrading of the textile industry by introducing environmentally friendly textile printing and dyeing technology."

(Xinhua News Agency September 1, 2010)