On March 14, 2016, in Suzhou, Clean By Design completed its third and last technical training on best practices for reducing water, energy, and pollution from apparel dyeing and finishing mills. These trainings, in addition to expert onsite visits, will helpparticipating millsadvance to the next step: developing efficiency improvement plans, and putting them into action for concrete environmental and economic results.

At the same time, our program piloted the Sustainable Apparel Coalition's (SAC's) Facility Environmental Module (FEM) version 3.0, which will be used as an industry sustainability index.  Our participating mills completed the module online and our consultants verified the results with onsite visits to all CBD participating mills. NRDC is working intensively with SAC to improve this tool, as well as to promote CBD best practices, to accelerate environmental improvements throughout the industry.

Since the kick-off of the Clean by Design Suzhou program in September 2015, the number of participating mills has grown to 26 and the number of multinational brands and retailers partners has grown to 10.