Abstract

The leather industry waste-water is one of the main pollution factors of the ecological environment. Due to long-term market competition, it was impossible to transfer the cost of waste water treatment to consumers. Discharging wastewater illegally became the usual behaviours of leather factories in past decades in China. The Environmental Supervision Department of China was faced with the dilemma of ʻIf we let it be, there will be a messʼ and ʻif we take strict supervision the enterprises could not survive due to the high treatment costʼ.We have to tolerate and accept the fact that environmental pollution is an inevitable consequence of extensive economic construction. In order to reduce and control pollution, the Supervision Department are strengthening supervision while accelerating the upgrading of leather production equipment, supporting enterprises to improve production process, guiding the mergers and reorganizations of the leather manufacturing industry, and seeking the dialectical unity of industry and public interests between pollution and development, survival and ecology.