The Swedish Chemicals Agency submitted a report to the Swedish government in early summer this year, recommending revisions to EU Regulation No. 1007/2011 on the names of textile fibers and related labeling. In December 2012, the Swedish government asked the Agency to formulate recommendations and principles to improve EU regulations on hazardous substances contained in textiles. The above recommendations are the results of the Agency’s research.
The main research goals proposed by the Swedish government are:
*Propose unified regulations at the EU level to effectively target hazardous chemicals contained in textiles placed on the EU market, regardless of their origin;
* Restrict hazardous chemical ingredients in textile products for consumer use, and the first step is to set targets for products that are classified as carcinogenic, mutagenic or harmful to reproduction (CMR), cause endocrine disruption, are harmful to the environment, and are harmful to reproduction. Substances that pose hazards to the aquatic environment, as well as substances listed as respiratory and skin sensitizers;
* Develop a regulation that can be implemented and managed by all parties involved.
EU Regulation No. 1007/2011 on the names of textile fibers and related labels stipulates the marking and labeling requirements for all textile products provided on the EU market. The regulations also introduce new requirements, stating that if textile products contain non-textile parts of animal origin (such as leather), specific words must be included on the label (for details of the regulations, please refer to the “EU Business News” Issue 22, 2011).
After evaluating various regulatory options in light of the above objectives, the Swedish Chemicals Agency concluded in its report that the best regulatory approach would be to expand the scope of application of EU Regulation No. 1007/2011 on the designation of textile fibers and related labeling, so as to Limit the chemical content of textiles. It is particularly worth noting that this EU regulation applies to all textile products. If Sweden’s proposal to include chemical restrictions in the regulation is accepted by the European Commission, the impact on economic operators may be far-reaching.
Other options that have been considered include regulating through the existing REACH regulations, developing new textile-specific regulations based on CE marking standards, and imposing environmental taxes on clothing and textile products.
The Swedish Chemicals Agency stated that amending EU Regulation No. 1007/2011 is an effective solution that can avoid the long and complicated process of formulating new regulations. Most of the existing regulations will remain unchanged. It is only necessary to simply expand the scope of products covered by the regulations and add new clauses that will not allow textile products containing hazardous substances to be placed on the EU market. On the other hand, the Bureau stated that the REACH regulations are not used to regulate chemical ingredients contained in products that are not chemicals themselves. If regulated through this regulation, the restriction process will be very labor-intensive.
Regarding the introduction of environmental taxes, the bureau has said in the past that it has drafted domestic framework proposals to tax consumer products containing certain categories of specific chemicals, with the first step being to tax clothing and footwear. The Agency points out that not only clothing, this approach can also be applied to various types of textiles that are relevant from a hazard and/or risk perspective, such as firefighter clothing or textile products for furniture. However, the bureau now points out that environmental taxes are currently only one of the options at the national level. In any case, relevant market participants may choose to pay taxes rather than reduce the chemical ingredients contained in textile products. Therefore, this approach does not impose severe restrictions on the use of hazardous chemicals in textiles and was not further evaluated in this study. Nonetheless, the bureau stressed that levying environmental taxes on textiles is still an option for Sweden.
In its proposal, the Swedish Chemicals Agency proposed regulating hazardous chemicals contained in textile products at three different levels: (i) regulation without exemptions; (ii) regulation with limited exemptions, and (iii) listed The process of introducing other substances or categories of substances and reducing their high permissible content levels.
The bureau specifically recommended that textile products containing substances classified as carcinogenic, mutagenic, harmful to fertility, or harmful to the environment should be banned. The recommendations also suggest that textile clothing containing chemicals classified as respiratory and skin sensitizers should also be banned. Later, the Bureau also proposed to include a list of exemptions and exemptions applied for on a case-by-case basis, but did not further explain the scope of the exemptions.
EU lawmakers are likely to be deeply interested in the Swedish Chemicals Agency’s report. If this is indeed the case, the European Commission may eventually impose restrictions on the relevant products along the same lines as recommended by the Agency and implement them within the EU.
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