Texprocess 2011: solutions to improve sustainability in the apparel industry

The question of ethical business is not a new one to the clothing industry and if something does not appear right to the western clothing consumer they will shout about it, media will dishonour the company in question, and brands can be ruined. Sweat shops, child labour, poor wages, forced overtime are all issues which are now addressed by nearly every exporter. 

Now we have further challenges for the industry. Corporate social responsibility, eco-friendliness, sustainability, traceability of hazardous substances are all now required, and all throughout an elongated and complex global supply chain. From the issue of forced child labour in the cotton fields of Uzbekistan, to the amount of water involved in dyeing tee shirts with different compositions of cotton, noxious chemicals used in the finishing processes, methane emitting sheep destroying the ozone layer, forced overtime in Chinese clothing factories. Every aspect of the supply chain has ramifications as to the acceptability of a garment. Texprocess from 24 to 27 May 2011 in Frankfurt am Main shows new systems and technologies helping to realize more sustainablitity in the textile and clothing industry. 

Consumers are becoming increasingly aware of the ever increasing demands on resources, caused by human overpopulation, the 

impact of contemporary western lifestyles, expanding industrialisation, the huge disparity between rich and poor, and other issues which are bringing widespread degradation and destruction of the natural environment on which all life ultimately depends. This concern is affecting all aspects of life, including the purchasing decisions of the end customers. They want to know that the garment they are buying, and the way it has been produced, is sustainable, i.e., it meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs; it embraces the main interdependent and indivisible areas of environmental protection, economic and social development. 

The textile and clothing industry is a diverse one, as much in the raw materials it uses as the techniques it employs. At each of the six stages typically required to make a garment, the negative impacts on the environment are as numerous as they are varied. Spinning, weaving and fabric manufacture undermine air quality, use much electricity, and create noise. Dyeing and printing consume vast amounts of water and chemicals, and may release numerous volatile agents into the atmosphere and water that are particularly harmful to our health. Garment making tends to be carried out in low cost labour countries where labour ethics may still be questionable and certainly require monitoring.

A focus on textile sustainability enables the entire value chain to find cost savings and production efficiencies and pass those savings on to customers while reducing the impact of textile production on people and the environment.

Facts: 

Textile waste occupies nearly 5% of all landfill space; one million tons of textiles will end up in a landfill every year.

According to the World Bank 20% of industrial fresh water pollution comes from textile treatment and dyeing. In 2009, the world used three trillion gallons of fresh water to produce 60 billion kilograms of fabric; it takes 700 gallons of fresh water to make one cotton t-shirt.

0ne trillion kilowatt hours is used every year by the global textile

industry which equates to 10% of total global carbon impact.

There is a request from more and more buyers around the world for goods and products to be acquired from suppliers whose key 

parameters such as quality controls, compliance with mandatory standards, and presence of critical components or hazardous substances must be traceable up to and including the supply of raw materials. There is a wealth of eco-certification, and legislation such as REACH. Systems and controls need to be in place to monitor these, such as IT systems, RFID, and much else. Machinery and equipment is becoming more environmentally friendly with lower noise emissions, lower energy usage, and using less oil lubricant. 

Much of this will be on show at the brand new biennial exhibition, Texprocess, which is being established by Messe Frankfurt as the new leading international trade fair for processing textile and other flexible materials. This event for the garment and textile processing industry will be held in Frankfurt am Main from 24 to 27 May 2011, parallel to the already well established Techtextil, the international trade fair for technical textiles and nonwovens. Texprocess will promote all the latest international technological innovations in the sector with products covering the entire supply chain from design, pattern production, cutting, making up and finishing to logistics, information technologies and technical accessories.

source:http://www.messefrankfurt.com/frankfurt/en/media/technische_messen/texprocess/frankfurt/texte/nachhaltigkeit.html

Forging new relations with institutions

Project English aims to provide every teacher and learner with skills, ideas, and access to the best resources from the U.K., says Mr. Sellers.

The British Council has expanded its programmes in the country by implementing several educational and cultural projects over these years. Paul Sellers, the new Director of the British Council for operations in South India, says that the council is keen on building relationships with a variety of institutions and people in India through its ongoing and forthcoming initiatives. In an interview to The Hindu-EducationPlus in Kochi, Mr. Sellers, who had earlier held senior positions with the British Council worldwide, elaborates on a wide-range of topics related to the council. Excerpts from the interview:

How good is the demand for U.K. higher education among students in India? How do you plan to tap the growing opportunities in the Indian higher education sector?

The demand for U.K. higher education keeps increasing every year. We had a 16 per cent increase last year. There are around 15,000 Indian students going to the U.K. [every year] to study the undergraduate or postgraduate programmes offered by the universities in the country. That is the number of students on our record. It is probably more than that. Interestingly, Kerala accounts for around two-third of the number. It is the biggest among the States. The largest number of students come from Kerala. We attribute this to the good school education and literacy.

Possibly the demand for courses in certain subject areas isnot met even though there are very good higher educational institutions in South India especially in health care and engineering.

And IT is also coming up. British Council institutions around the world have always had a mission to promote the U.K. as a higher educational destination.

Increasingly, we want to build sort of mutual links between U.K. universities and India. We make it easy for the U.K. universities to come and present themselves before Indian students by holding U.K. education exhibitions. We also work closely with the British High Commission so that they can give information on visa requirements, which is an important issue. We are conscious of the competition from Australia, South East Asia, and Europe. The U.K.'s niche is often the postgraduate programmes that complement the undergraduate programmes students pursue here especially in niche subject areas.

One of the ways forward is to link educational institutions in India and the U.K. so that students have a real choice where to study and from where they get quality education.

Do you think that the move by the Indian government to allow foreign universities to open shop here would pave way for the entry of higher education providers in the U.K. to India?

I think definitely there is an opportunity. The new legislation is a positive step forward. I see the U.K. institutions going for joint ventures in India. Some would set up their own campus. But I understand it requires a lot of investment. Some universities thrive on that — Middlesex, Nottingham and some others. They already have campuses in China and the United Arab Emirates running successfully. The reputation of universities is very often based on its locality or presence. The best option, the low-risk model, is to have joint programmes and exchange of faculty and students. And again here British Council intends to help by maintaining the contact with the Indian universities. We can put them together when institutes in the U.K. want to go for joint collaboration.

Do you think that the visa restrictions imposed by the U.K. government would impact genuine applications for higher education?

No, definitely not. There is no barrier at all in terms of the standard students who want to pursue a programme in the U.K. on a bonafide basis especially in undergraduate and postgraduate programmes. What the U.K. government has done is to tie-up some of the loose ends in the legislation. It is a fact that some students heading to the U.K. for short-term programmes like language courses are not necessarily going for that sole purpose. We encourage students to come. The student with the right qualification is offered a place in the U.K. in the right institution.

What is your advice to students who are searching for data on the higher educational opportunities in the U.K.? How would they be able to identify fake agents and agencies?

They should go through the British Council web site (www.britishcouncil.org). We have a database of all the universities in the U.K. And this list is vetted and guaranteed by the British Council. It also gives a breakdown of the courses and subjects specialised by each university.

If you are lucky enough to be in a place where you have access to one of our U.K. education exhibition, you can talk directly to the representatives of the universities.

I think the vast majority of agents do a really good job, as they assist the students in finding their right course.

If their advice and data match the initial research you have done on the basis of the British Council web site, it is more likely that they can help you. Do not pay fees upfront without a written guarantee and a contract or paper work. I believe nearly a dozen agents based in Kochi have passed the British Council training for agents.

We offer them a special training. Another thing to do is to check whether they are accredited by the council. It is not mandatory. But it is yet another guarantee.

Could you elaborate on the ongoing ‘Learn English' project initiated by the council?

Project English, a regional initiative on English language teaching (ELT) and training, was launched in November 2007 with the commitment to provide every teacher and learner with skills, ideas, and access to the best resources from the U.K.

A target of indirectly training 7.5 lakh teachers in India from 2007-12 has been set. We have currently reached 74 per cent of the target. Since November 2007, we have trained 4,266 master trainers, 5,56,166 teachers and 28 million students through this initiative.

We are in the middle of a very productive contract with the Kerala government to train teachers of English in the public sector.

The methodology is to train a cadre of master trainers. In the past 18 months, we have trained 300 master trainers. They have trained over 6,000 teacher trainers. These trainers have taught two lakh students in Kerala so far.

We do have similar agreements with nine State governments including Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. Our aim is to get as close as to the end user — the student.

The council keeps a quality control over the programme. Considering the huge demand in India, our ambition is to become more high-tech with learning of English. We are now researching and investing in English through mobile phone technology and online programmes. Picking the right technology is the key.

One technology might be right for Europe but may not be right for India. Mobile phone market in India had outstretched. Our Internet provision is very good. It will help in increasing your capabilities in learning English. There is a whole range of free materials on the council's web site on learning English.

The focus is still on the teacher. There are very good teacher support materials on the web site.

We already have the Cambridge teacher training course. And we are looking for ways to transmit a similar course through television.

source:http://www.hindu.com/edu/2011/03/08/stories/2011030850030100.htm

Bangalore most preferred job city for engineering students

NEW DELHI: Seven out of every 10 engineering students in India prefer Bangalore as their 'first job' city, ahead of the capital Delhi, reveals a survey.

According to employability measurement and recruitment firm Aspiring Minds Research Cell, about 72 per cent of the engineering students surveyed voted for Bangalore as the most preferred destination to work in.

"In India, Bangalore is the engineers' Mecca. It offers growth, options and a community of like-minded people. Bangalore has undoubtedly the largest base in terms of IT companies, opportunities and an existing engineering population," Aspiring Minds Founder and Director Himanshu Aggarwal said.

Bangalore was followed by Delhi, which was preferred by 32 per cent of the respondents, while Hyderabad was the favourite among 30 per cent of the students surveyed.

At fourth place is Pune, with 30 per cent of the respondents voting for the city, followed by Chennai, which was favoured by 23 per cent of students.

Mumbai was sixth in the list of preferred cities for engineers.

Regional preferences emerge strongly, as students from the South, West and North of the country voted for Bangalore, Pune and Delhi, respectively, as their favourite city. For easterners, Bangalore was the favourable option. Chandigarh and Mysore also emerged as preferred destinations for engineering students in the survey.

The survey took into account the views of 19,000 engineering students across India. It was undertaken to determine the city preferences of students and allowed the respondents to specify up to three cities. 

Source:http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/careers/job-trends/Bangalore-most-preferred-job-city-for-engineering-students/articleshow/7610463.cms 

Huge demand for skilled professionals in IT industry

Many options: IT industry is heavily dependent on the analytical skills of its workforce.

Unlike most other fields, IT sector is human resource-intensive. The skills of its human resources – software professionals – are critical in keeping the sector running.

IT industry is heavily dependent on the analytical skills of its workforce unlike other sectors such as heavy industries, banking etc., where there is considerable scope for automation of major chunk of the operations at the cost of manpower.

As such, there is a huge demand from the IT industry for skilled professionals well-versed with software. But with a range of courses in demand in the job market, there exists some confusion in the minds of budding software professionals on which domain they should opt for.

To help clear the air, here is some fodder on some of the courses in the job market and what one could expect from them.

Solaris, a Sun Microsystems product now acquired by Oracle is an operating system, a close variant of Unix.

This is pretty popular as a programming environment and also as a server system. Although entry level trainings are there, this is more of an advanced topic, says Puran B. Kalapala, an IIT graduate working with a city-based start-up.

Microsoft SharePoint is a family of software products developed by Microsoft for collaboration, file sharing and web publishing. It is pretty popular in the job market nowadays due to the increasing need for common collaboration portals across teams or requirements distributed across geographical locations. As a course, you will get handsome jobs in good companies, as only good companies can afford to buy Enterprise products from Microsoft, reasons Mr. Puran.

ABAP (Advanced Business Application Programming), a high-level programming language (panic not, high level means an advanced language easy for humans) created by SAP has been around for quite sometime. It is mainly used for programming the SAP-Application Server.

SAP is divided into four distinct modules covering typical functions in an organization – HR (Human Resources) Financials and Controlling (FICO), Materials Management (MM) and Sales and Distribution (SD). “In the SAP world ABAP is unavoidable, and for enterprise level systems, SAP is unavoidable,” points out Mr. Puran, “which means, ABAP professionals will be in considerable demand in the market.”

Common Business Oriented Language (Cobol) is one of the most oft-heard software in the market today. But it is pretty much out of favour among the masses except for in IBM where they have legacy systems called Mainframes. “These huge computers (Mainframes) are still in use because of the heavy dependence of large and typically old industries on them, banking institutions and financial giants for example,” says Mr. Puran. “The cost of shifting to newer technologies is way too high when compared to maintaining those old computers, so they stay.”

Job Control Language (JCL) is a scripting language, part of the Mainframes Operating systems. It is used for controlling large batch processes like calculating interests on all savings accounts in a bank. A scripting language is comprised of scripts or pieces of code which do not need to be compiled, and can be put into an already running system and they start running as if it is any other program. Typically programs need to be compiled before they can be run, not so with scripts.

Another of the legacy systems that continues to be in some demand is Customer Information Control System (CICS), part of the four-part IBM Mainframe software. “This is a 'transaction server' and is mainly used to control the database transactions that take place in an IBM Mainframe Operating System.”

DB2 is a flavour of Database. Learning DB2 means learning how to create, manipulate and maintain databases, just like any of the other databases, says Mr. Puran, senior software engineer with Asymptopica Pvt. Ltd. There are many databases in existence like Oracle DB, Microsoft SQLServer, POSTGRE SQL and DB2, and our existence depends on these databases.

DB2 was initially a part of the IBM mainframes system, but now DB2 has moved on and is one of the five most used databases in the world. They can now be used on Windows or Linux systems and so there is a good demand for DB2 administrators or programmers in the market.

source:http://www.hindu.com/edu/2011/02/21/stories/2011022150540100.htm

Things much better for Indian students in Australia - Envoy

Chandigarh: With things turning out to be a "lot calmer" in recent months vis-�-vis Indian students in Australia, Australian High Commissioner to India Peter N. Varghese said that the safety of Indian students there is an issue that is "behind us".

Varghese said the Australian government had taken a series of measures which had led to "things being a lot calmer than they were 12 months ago".

"Look, I think that the issue of safety of Indian students is behind us really. We have taken a series of measures at federal government level, state government level and in relation to our police forces," Varghese told the sources in an interview here.

"All of those measures, which range from law enforcement to registration of educational institutions and to changes to our migration policy - separating out education and migration. I think all of those have helped us to manage this issue and I think that things are a lot calmer now than they were 12 months ago," the envoy said.

There had been a string of attacks on Indian students in Australia over the past two years, causing an uproar in India. Nitin Garg, an Indian student, was fatally stabbed in Melbourne in a race attack that took place in January last year.

Varghese said that External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna, who is leaving for Australia Tuesday for a two-day framework dialogue meeting, will be briefed on the issue of safety measures for Indian students in Australia.

"I think there is a recognition by the Indian government that we have taken the matter seriously enough and taken action on it. We would be happy to give Mr. Krishna an update on how things are and a full briefing on the measures that are taken," he said.

"We do regular surveys of attitudes of international students and the most recent surveys have shown that the Indian students in Australia continue to be very positive about their experience in Australia," Varghese asserted. Since a majority of the student community in Australia - which is around 300,000 - is from Punjab, the Australian government sees Punjab as an important place.

"At the people-to-people level, it (Punjab) is very important. We have a large number of student migration from Punjab. Because our trade with India is so dominated by commodities, Punjab is less important on the trading side because you are not a big buyer of coal, copper etc," he said.

Figures show that student migration from India to Australia has dropped by as much as 80 percent in recent months.

"We would not have opened a (trade) office here if we were not interested in expanding the relationship and if we didn't recognize that it is an important relationship for us."

"In Punjab, at the moment, not much is there on the investment front. The sort of things we are looking at is doing in the agriculture sector. That would involve more Australian technology and expertise than investment. Educational linkages also do not necessarily require investment," Varghese said.

But he added that there could be some investment in the IT (information technology) sector even though it is early days on this front.

"One of the reasons we set up a (trade) office here is that we would like to do some scoping of the opportunities here. We will see if we can make it more specific."

The high commissioner said that investment between India and Australia has not been as much as the potential is.

"Investment has kind of lagged behind in the economic relationship. I am very keen to see investment in both directions. We are now seeing some substantial Indian investment in Australia in coal which is very good," he said.

"The Australian investment in India is still very low and I think that more than anything else, it reflects on the trade between both countries. The big ticket items in Australian exports to India are all commodities and they don't generate big investment."

"Over time as the economic relationship base broadens and Australian companies get in other sectors, we will see more Australian investment into India. I want to see that happening more often," the high commissioner added. IANS