Symposium on Textile Discharge Standard Implementation and Negotiated Indirect Discharge Held in Keqiao, Shaoxing

On 12 October, the Technical Symposium on Implementation of the Textile Industry Water Pollutant Discharge Standard and Negotiated Indirect Discharge of Wastewater from Printing and Dyeing Park Enterprises was held in Keqiao District, Shaoxing City, Zhejiang Province. Representatives from government, industry bodies, enterprises and research institutes gathered to explore high-quality development pathways for the printing and dyeing sector under the new national standard.

Fragmented layouts and widely varying treatment capability among textile printing and dyeing enterprises have long been difficult points in water environmental protection. The newly revised GB 4287-2026, implemented in phases from 1 September 2026, explicitly brings centralised textile industry wastewater treatment facilities into the regulatory scope and permits negotiated indirect discharge for park enterprises. This marks a shift from single-point compliance control to coordinated park and enterprise governance.

According to the Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences, textile printing and dyeing is a significant livelihood industry and a priority area for water pollutant control. Implementing the new standard is both a hard requirement for upgrading pollution control and a key lever for green, low-carbon transformation.

Keqiao has grown with water and flourished through cloth, accounting for roughly 40 percent of China's and 60 percent of Zhejiang's printing and dyeing capacity. It pioneered negotiated indirect discharge in China, consolidating enterprises into parks for centralised treatment and building the country's largest specialised textile printing and dyeing wastewater treatment plant.

In practice, dyeing plants pipe wastewater to the treatment works after both parties agree in advance on sewer discharge limits, with the plant delivering unified treatment to compliant discharge. To validate the model, Keqiao worked with the Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences to survey 66 enterprises across the cluster, analysing 20,000 water samples and negotiating indirect discharge limits with each company. The approach reduced land occupation, investment cost and operating cost for those enterprises by 43 percent, 40 percent and 12 percent respectively.