The Requirements For The Safety And Environmental Protection Of Textile And Clothing In China Are Becoming More And More Strict

Since January 1, 2010, a new set of national dress standards has been formally implemented.

For the first time, the standard made clear requirements for pH, decomposable carcinogenic aromatic amine dyes and formaldehyde.

This indicates that China's increasingly stringent requirements for safety and environmental protection in textile and clothing industry are becoming more stringent.

According to statistics from the China Textile Industry Association Statistics Center, in 2009 1~9, the EU and the United States announced a sharp increase in the recall of Chinese textile and clothing products.

The problem of ecological safety is one of the main reasons for recall.

In this regard, the industry has warned that ecological safety has become a matter of great concern to the entire apparel industry chain, whether it has a substantial impact on product exports or domestic sales.

In this new environmental challenge, dye producers are the first ones to bear the brunt.

The awakening of dye Enterprises: ecological safety is an inevitable trend.

What is product ecological safety?

Tian Li Ming, Secretary General of the China Dyeing Association, thinks that its connotation should include 5 aspects, namely, the ecological safety of raw materials, the ecological safety of the production process, the ecological safety of the final product, the ecological safety of the product using process, and the ecological safety of the products.

Da Limin said that the ecological safety of textiles is directly related to the dyestuffs and corresponding application processes.

If the harmful substances in textile dyestuffs can be controlled, it is possible to effectively prevent harmful chemicals from being banned and restricted from being taken into the final textile products from the source.

Although most of the relevant laws, regulations, standards and conformity assessment procedures are targeted at market oriented final products, there are no items and limit values for assessing and evaluating dyestuff safety, but downstream textile enterprises will make environmental protection requirements for dyestuff manufacturers.

Therefore, dyestuff manufacturers should conform to the green trend, raise awareness of environmental protection, and speed up the pace of new product development based on innovation.

As a matter of fact, people in the industry have warned that international environmental requirements will come to China sooner or later.

At present, there is still a certain gap between the ecological safety of dyestuffs produced by some dyestuffs in China and the requirements of international environmental protection.

The reason why there is a market in China is that the people are not paying much attention.

After a few years, people's consciousness has improved, the degree of prosperity has increased, and attention to ecological environmental problems, many enterprises have to be eliminated.

"As the demand for the chemicals used in clothing is becoming more and more stringent at home and abroad, many well-known textile and garment enterprises have compiled a list of chemical limiting substances in accordance with this requirement. They have made detailed prohibitions and restrictions on the chemicals contained in clothing, and preferred dyes which are pre registered and certified by EU REACH laws and regulations.

Our dye enterprises should pay close attention to this.

Ranwasen, deputy chief engineer of Limited by Share Ltd, Longsheng group, Zhejiang, China's leading dye enterprise.

In recent years, some large and medium-sized dyestuff enterprises such as Zhejiang Longsheng, Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Qingdao, Suzhou and so on have realized the importance of ecological safety. They took the lead in developing the dyestuff products with safety and environmental protection.

"Now the company is very concerned about the ecological indicators, has been included in the conventional testing indicators.

Because the quality is good, the ecological environment is not good enough, sooner or later, there is no way out. "

Ruan Haixing, director of the Zhejiang Institute of clay research, said, "before we made dyes, there was no need for this requirement, so long as the quality passed, the stained cloth was not spotted, but now it is different."

Action of dyestuff Enterprises: the most feasible way is to pass the test and certification road.

The results of product ecological safety are embodied in the testing results of dyestuff products.

However, it is not realistic for dye enterprises to conduct banned items testing one by one, because hundreds of banned or restricted chemicals are too expensive to detect.

"The list of restricted substances of each clothing enterprise is different, and some enterprises have dozens of pages of material list.

It is impossible for us to test all restricted and banned chemicals.

Because the cost of the test can not be estimated, any dye enterprise can not afford it. It is necessary to close the enterprise just by testing costs. "

Ranwasen said.

So what methods should dye enterprises adopt to prove that their products are eco-friendly and can meet environmental regulations?

Ranwasen believes that it is most feasible for internationally recognized authoritative testing and certification bodies such as Tianxiang to do chemical testing and certification.

The qualified dye products can be identified by Tianxiang chemical safety and environmental protection certification mark.

Dye products affixed this logo can greatly increase the trust of downstream dyeing and garment enterprises.

Dye enterprises also save costs, and do not need to test the restricted chemicals prescribed by each garment enterprise one by one.

What is the procedure for testing and certifying chemical safety and environmental protection?

Lin Li, manager of the eco Product Certification Department of Shanghai Tianxiang company, said that the applicant should fill out the form first and submit a safety information, instructions and recommended process and a declaration of responsibility for the chemicals.

Tianxiang company will verify the products and projects that are applied for testing and certification, issue acceptance applications and cost estimates.

If the application is not accepted, it will issue an inadmissible notice and explain why.

If the applicant accepts the cost estimate, Tianxiang will ask the applicant to provide samples.

After passing the test, Tianxiang company issued a certificate to the applicant, which is valid for one year.

After a year's validity, renewal can be carried out.

If necessary, Tianxiang will return to the certification business to verify the quality control of the testing and certification products.

Tianxiang company tests the content of chemicals in accordance with the environmental requirements of the international market for consumer goods. It tests and certify whether the chemicals used in the production, processing of textiles, leather and toys are contained in prohibited chemicals. The criteria for the implementation are based on the EU REACH regulations and the current international popular industry standards.

The items for testing and certification include sensitizing dyes, alkylphenols and alkylphenol polyoxyethylene ether, banned flame retardants, chlorobenzene and chlorotoluene. Under the reduction conditions, azo dyes, carcinogenic heavy metals, soluble heavy metals, formaldehyde, total heavy metals, organotin compounds, pentachlorophenol and their salts and esters, ortho two carboxylate plasticizers, polychlorinated biphenyl derivatives, perfluorooctane sulfonyl compounds, short chain chlorinated paraffins, fused ring aromatic hydrocarbons, etc., which can be suspected to be carcinogenic aromatic amines, can be cracked, extracted heavy metals, soluble heavy metals, formaldehyde, heavy metals, organotin compounds, pentachlorophenol and their salts and esters.

Dye enterprises worry: the industry chain has not yet been opened up.

Even if large enterprises have taken the lead in action, it is difficult to produce the dyestuff products in line with the eco environmental indicators in Europe and the United States.

Because this requires raw materials supplied by upstream suppliers of dyes to be safe and environmentally friendly at first, but this is hard to achieve at the moment.

"Many of our eco-environmental problems are brought in by upstream dye intermediates, not by ourselves."

Ranwasen said, "clothing enterprises will be issued to the middlemen in the restricted list of materials, and the middlemen will be sent to the printing and dyeing factory again, then the printing and dyeing factory will be sent to our Dyestuff Factory again.

We also have suppliers of raw materials, but when we release them, we get stuck, and the eco industrial chain is broken down here. "

Ranwasen gave a detailed explanation of this problem.

"I went to our material supplier and asked," do you know the eco environmental indicators? "

The other replied, yes.

So I asked him to provide product ecological indicators to be qualified.

But he said such stringent requirements would lead to an increase in the emissions of "three wastes". The cost of harnessing the "three wastes" needs to be raised, and the price should be doubled on the existing basis.

Ranwasen suddenly became dumb. "If we buy raw materials at double price, our enterprises will lose competitiveness immediately."

In addition, some of the basic chemical products needed to produce dyestuffs will also bring environmental problems.

Zheng Dongsong, deputy chief engineer of Limited by Share Ltd in Jiangsu, said that sulphuric acid often brings in dioxins.

Disperse dyes will be widely used in the commercialization of the disperse dyes, and the main raw materials of the dispersing agents contain many by-products, so it is very difficult to avoid the inclusion of anthracene. Dioxins and anthracene will cause environmental problems.

Obviously, it is not enough for dye enterprises to push ahead with ecological safety.

In this regard, Lin Li said that every link of the entire industrial chain's overall quality of products needs a certain amount of time.

Environmental protection has really developed in China for ten or twenty years.

In the late 90s of last century, some printing and dyeing enterprises had the concept of environmental protection.

After several years of pmission, dye enterprises have begun to act in recent years.

If they want to carry out environmental control, they will require support from upstream suppliers.

So far, large enterprises like Zhejiang Longsheng already have the awareness of environmental control.

They have also actively communicated such information to the upstream, demanding that their products meet environmental requirements.

But this needs a certain process.

At present, the demand for environmental protection has begun to pass on dyes upstream, but at present, the upstream has just had this awareness.

So how can dye products be safe and environmentally friendly under existing conditions?

Ranwasen said that Zhejiang Longsheng will strictly control the raw materials and their synthetic technology, adjust their product structure according to the EU REACH regulations and relevant domestic laws and regulations, and gradually use more advanced technology to produce more environmentally-friendly dyes to adapt to the market.