Material Insights · Understanding the Material World

Textiles and leather and Water

Textiles and leather use water at every stage, from irrigating cotton to dye baths and hide soaking, and return it loaded with dyes, salts and chemicals. In India, court-enforced zero liquid discharge in Tiruppur and the tanning clusters turned effluent rules into a cost and siting factor for the whole chain.

Textiles and leather (industry) and Water (commodity): 3 relationships.

How they are linked

1. Industry input

Physical flow · Strong · Water to textiles and leather

Wet processing, from scouring and bleaching to dyeing, printing and finishing, is done in water, tanning starts with soaking and washing hides, and cotton is often irrigated; the site counts six enterprise types in this industry that depend on water.

  • 6 enterprise types in textiles and leather that depend on water; up to 4 of 5 on criticality
  • about 93 billion m³ water used by the fashion industry each year, UN estimate, 2019
  • about 7,500 litres water to make one pair of jeans, UN estimate

Dependence varies by stage: polyester and nylon makers need water for cooling and quenching (4 of 5), viscose makers for spinning baths and washing, dyeing houses for dye baths and rinsing, tanneries for soaking, and spinning mills only for humidification. The UN attributes about 20% of global wastewater to the fashion industry, which is why effluent rather than intake is often the binding constraint.

Enterprise types that depend on it:

  • Polyester and nylon fibre producers: cooling and quench (criticality 4 of 5)
  • Cotton growers and ginners: irrigation (criticality 3 of 5)
  • Viscose and other man-made cellulosic fibre makers: spinning baths and washing (criticality 3 of 5)
  • Dyeing, printing and finishing houses: dye baths and rinsing (criticality 3 of 5)
  • Tanneries and leather finishers: soaking and washing (criticality 3 of 5)
  • Yarn spinning mills: humidification (criticality 2 of 5)

Sources: Material Insights; UNCCD

2. Tiruppur zero liquid discharge

Policy · High in India · Effluent rules govern dyeing in Tiruppur

Dyeing and bleaching effluent polluted the Noyyal river, so the Madras High Court required Tiruppur's units to reach zero liquid discharge, treating and reusing water instead of releasing it.

  • more than 700 bleaching and dyeing units ordered to close by the Madras High Court, 2011
  • 18 common effluent treatment plants in Tiruppur, set up at a combined cost of about ₹1,070 crore
  • 95% share of water treated and reused in Tiruppur, 2016

The January 2011 order kept units shut until they could show zero discharge, verified by the state pollution control board and a court-appointed monitoring committee. The cluster recovered by pooling treatment in common plants, and by 2016 treated and reused about 95% of its water. Knitwear exports from Tiruppur were expected to reach about ₹24,000 crore in 2016, so the rule reshaped the cluster rather than ending it.

Sources: Down To Earth; Business Today

3. Tannery effluent limits

Policy · High in India · Salt and solids limits shape leather processing

Hides are preserved with salt and processed in water, so tannery effluent carries high dissolved solids that conventional treatment cannot remove; strict dissolved-solids limits pushed Tamil Nadu's tanning clusters to zero liquid discharge.

  • about 200 tanneries in three clusters around Ranipet served by common effluent plants
  • from about 28 to 11 or 12 litres water per kg of wet salted hide, before and after the ZLD stage
  • 2,100 mg/L discharge limit for inorganic dissolved solids enforced on tannery effluent

A UNIDO study of the Ranipet plants found that adding a ZLD stage cut water use per kg of hide by more than half, close to the theoretical minimum, but left salt residue to store or dispose of: about 5,000 tonnes at one plant in 2015 to 2016. Pooling tanneries around a common plant spreads the cost of this treatment.

Sources: UNIDO

For investors

Key learnings

  1. In textile and leather processing the constraint is effluent, not intake: discharge rules decide where dyeing and tanning can operate and at what cost.
  2. Tiruppur shows that a strict rule can shut hundreds of units at once and then be absorbed through shared treatment plants, so regulatory risk can be a severe but temporary shock where common treatment is funded.
  3. Common effluent plants and reuse rates are the assets to watch, since a cluster that loses its treatment capacity loses its licence to operate.

What to track

  • Pollution control board orders on dyeing and tanning units: Closure orders signal near-term supply disruption in a cluster (As issued · Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board, CPCB)
  • India's knitwear and leather export values: Show whether compliance costs are eroding competitiveness of the Tamil Nadu clusters (Monthly · AEPC, Council for Leather Exports, Ministry of Commerce)
  • Groundwater levels in textile districts: Falling levels raise water cost and dependence on recycled water (Four times a year · Central Ground Water Board)

For policymakers

Key learnings

  1. Zero liquid discharge is achievable for clusters but only with pooled treatment, so funding common plants matters as much as setting the rule.
  2. Salt and sludge from ZLD do not disappear; disposal rules and recovery markets for that salt are the next policy gap.
  3. PM MITRA parks and new textile clusters can build shared treatment in from the start rather than retrofitting it after a court order.

What to track

  • Capacity and utilisation of textile and tannery CETPs: Under-used or failing plants precede pollution and closure risk (Annual · CPCB and state boards)
  • Noyyal and Palar river water quality: Shows whether ZLD is working downstream (Monthly to quarterly · Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board, CPCB National Water Quality Monitoring Programme)

India

India enforces zero liquid discharge on major textile and tanning clusters in Tamil Nadu: Tiruppur reuses about 95% of its process water through common plants, and Ranipet's tanneries run shared ZLD plants.

Sources

  1. Textiles and leather: materials, Material Insights (2026)
  2. Tirupur dyeing units told to close, Down To Earth (2011)
  3. How India's knitwear capital overcame its water shortage and reduced pollution, Business Today (2016)
  4. UN launches drive to highlight environmental cost of staying fashionable, UNCCD (2019)
  5. Zero liquid discharge at the Ranipet tannery common effluent plants, UNIDO (2017)