The First Global Standard For Textile And Apparel Recycling

In response to strong demand from brands and retailers for environmentally friendly textiles, the Management Alliance certification body has developed the first global recovery standard for textile and apparel (GRS) to ensure greater procurement transparency through production and supply chain. The new GRS is a three tier system, which is divided into copper standard, silver standard and gold standard according to the recovery standard of each product. The highest gold standard requires that the product contains 95-100 recycled materials, silver standard products contain 70 to 90 percent of recycled materials, while copper standard GRSlogo products need to contain less than 30% recycled materials. All standard products must show the percentage of recovery components, and appropriate gold, silver and copper GRS signs will be attached. MarkPros e, head of the certificate authority of the management alliance, said that the development of the global recycling standard is a response to the expanding demand of the textile industry, and supports them to produce environmentally friendly products with recycled materials. The mainstay of this standard is the tracking plus tracking system, which supports the requirements of textile factories and brands on the composition of recycled products. The management alliance says that for tracking add tracking systems, they will use a transaction certification system instead of a virtual online system, because not everyone in the supply chain is willing to expose costs or any secrets. According to GRS, the recycling materials for textile utilization will be based on the standards already declared by the scientific certification system (SCS). In addition to raw material specifications, this standard also includes environmental processing standards. It includes strict requirements for wastewater treatment and use of chemicals (according to global organic textile standards (GOTS) and Oeko-Tex100. Social responsibility factors were also included in the GRS to ensure workers' health and safety, to support workers' labor rights and to comply with the standards laid down by the International Labour Organization (ILO). GRS is designed for the whole world.