What Chemicals are Lurking in Your Supply Chain!
Since February this year, Australian customers have been asked to return 201,000 items – 24 styles of jeans and one style of sheet and pillow slip – after they were found to contain unacceptable concentrations of hazardous azo dyes, according to Thinkstock. When certain azo dyes have prolonged contact with skin they can break down to form “aromatic amines”, some of which the World Health Organisation International Agency for Research on Cancer classifies as known carcinogens.
Earlier this year, Greenpeace, the independent NGO and activist organization in US, published a report about products manufactured globally for 12 of the industry’s top apparel and footwear brands. In the report, “A Little Story about the Monsters in your Closet…”, Greenpeace targets several international brands for being more focused on the dollars spent in the production of their goods while showing disregard for the long term effect and damage to their consumer by selling goods with more than acceptable levels of restricted chemical evident.
As a brand, retailer or manufacturer this isn’t a good position to be in. The bigger question is how it happened and what can you do to avoid being publicly smeared like these others?
“The study follows on from several previous investigations published by Greenpeace as part of its Detox campaign, which identified that hazardous chemicals are present in textile and leather products as a result of their use during manufacture. It confirms that the use of hazardous chemicals is still widespread – even during the manufacture of clothes for children and infants.” http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/en/campaigns/toxics/detox/Little-Monsters/
Even though manufacturers and brands are requiring their suppliers to follow strict guidelines for chemical use, the report shows that the finished goods picked up in the store still have higher than acceptable limits than those set by the governments or brands. This means that something has gone astray in the material development or production process.
The way to manage this is through greater visibility into the development and production processes, a task not easily achieved based on geographical separation alone. So technology and process has to be improved.
Helping to ensure your brand is compliant with these regulations; ecVision offers preventative measures making it possible for you to collaborate between your brands suppliers and manufacturers during and throughout the raw material design, development, and testing, pre- and post-production stages. Quality checks need to be consistent and enforced. Chemical testing needs to take the same priority as quality testing. Would you allow a batch of poorly stitched garments out of the factory? Then why let harmful chemicals be introduced to your consumers at harmful levels when that wasn’t part of the plan either?
ecVision Suite® allows you to manage and track all of your testing results while linking the BOM with the PO and tying in the product testing data from your suppliers and testing labs. Gathered from multiple systems, all the critical information is then consolidated into a centralised platform — making the process more manageable and visible across your supply chain.
ecVision’s unique solution can help your company in efforts to re-evaluate business strategies, gain a better understanding of the critical inter dependencies and supply chain risks along the way — from the sourcing of raw materials to delivery to the customer — and appropriately manage these risks before they happen or when you are faced with them.
How important is it for you to detox your supply chain?