A new United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) report, authored by QUT researchers, has revealed widespread failures in how governments regulate pollution from the fashion industry.
The report, Supporting the Transition to a Sustainable Textile Value Chain: The Role of Environmental Permitting Systems, examined environmental laws across 10 major textile-producing nations and found inconsistent and fragmented permitting frameworks that failed to keep pace with the scale of industry impacts.
The textile value chain (from spinning and dyeing to garment assembly), generates significant wastewater, chemical pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.
Yet the report found many factories can operate without undergoing a full environmental impact assessment, with some high-risk activities not classified as "significant" under national legislation.
Lead author Professor Rowena Maguire, from the QUT School of Law and Director of the QUT Centre of Justice, said the findings showed the need for immediate policy reform if countries were to curb escalating environmental damage.
"You can tell the 'in' colour of a season by looking at the colours of the waterway," Professor Maguire said.
"Our research uncovered a number of loopholes that allow these textile operations to proceed without proper scrutiny. Environmental permits should be the frontline defence against pollution, but inconsistent laws and weak oversight mean the system often isn't doing its job."
The report compared permitting laws in Bangladesh, Brazil, China, Egypt, Germany, India, Indonesia, Jordan, Türkiye and the United States.
While all have environmental permitting regimes, only some have moved towards integrated permitting: the gold standard for regulating industrial pollution, where air, water, land and resource use are assessed together under a single permit.
Many countries still rely on single-media permits, granted by different government agencies and assessed in isolation.
This fractured approach, Professor Maguire said, made it harder to manage cumulative impacts and enabled pollution issues to slip between regulatory cracks.
The report also highlighted a number of gaps including:
- Limited requirements for pollutant discharge reporting, leaving regulators with an incomplete picture of factory impacts;
- Weak monitoring, with broad legal powers rarely supported by evidence of on-the-ground enforcement;
- Penalties that are too low to deter non-compliance, even when criminal sanctions exist; and
- Little guidance on site rehabilitation, risking long-term contamination of communities after factory closure.
As a result, 18 recommendations were put forward for policymakers.
These included modernising environmental permitting laws, requiring social and gender-impact assessments; ensuring Best Available Techniques (BAT) are built into permit conditions; mandating public participation; and introducing risk-based monitoring of high-impact textile operations.
The report also identified an opportunity for countries to integrate elements of voluntary industry standards into national legislation, strengthening compliance using frameworks already familiar to manufacturers.
"Voluntary standards have raised the bar, but they lack enforcement," Professor Maguire said.
"Embedding these benchmarks into national law would give governments stronger, clearer tools to hold industry accountable."
The report was co-authored by QUT researchers Associate Professor Bree Hurst and Alexandra Clark alongside Professor Alice Payne and Paige Street from RMIT.
Read the full report published online.
Main photo: Zeya Irish via Pexels.
