THE NETHERLANDS – [11.13.08] In response to strong demand from brands and retailers, Control Union Certifications has launched the first Global Recycling Standard (GRS) for textiles and clothing to ensure greater sourcing clarity right through the production supply chain.
The new GRS is a three-tiered system with a bronze, silver and gold level standard based on the amount of recycled content in any one given product. The top level Gold standard requires that products containing between 95 – 100% recycled material, while Silver labelled products are made of up between 70 – 95% recycled product. Products labelled with the Bronze GRS logo have to have a recycled content of no less than 30%.
In all cases the products will have to display the percentage of recycled content and may be labelled with the appropriate gold, silver of bronze GRS logos.
“The launch of the Global Recycled Standard is in response to an increasing desire from the textile industry to back up claims that can be made regarding recycled products,” said Mark Prosé of Control Union Certifications, “the backbone of the standard is a track-and-trace system to back up such claims made by mills and brands about the level of recycled product.”
For tracking and tracing Control Union says it will use a transaction certification system instead of a virtual on-line system because it says that not everyone in the supply chain will want to disclose cost or any confidentiality.
Under GRS the use of the recycled materials in textile will be based on criteria already laid down by Scientific Certification Systems (SCS).
The standard also includes environmental processing criteria in addition to raw material specifications. This includes strict waste water treatment requirements and chemicals use based on the Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS) and the Oeko-Tex 100.
An element of social responsibility is also incorporated into GRS, which ensures workers’ health ahd safety and upholds workers’ labour rights in accordance with the International Labor Organisation (ILO) criteria.
The GRS is intended for global use, but has been kicked off in the Far East to start with and is combined effort from Control Union in the Netherlands, Hong Kong and Korea.
Comments