When you buy a pair of blue jeans, you may not consider the harm they may cause to people or the environment. However, synthetic dyes and other chemicals used in the production of jeans and other clothing may make workers sick and pollute waterways, especially in manufacturing areas in Asia, where cadmium is found in water and sediments outside textile industrial parks. , Chromium and lead and other heavy metals.
Now this situation is beginning to change, because organizations and consumers' demand for products that do not harm humans or pollute the environment has promoted the development of forward-looking brands to safer chemical products. For example, Levi's stopped using a water repellent containing short-chain perfluorinated chemicals (PFAS for short). This "permanent chemical" is related to cancer and reproductive hazards, and it appears in drinking everywhere. In the water. With the help of GreenScreen, the company switched to a safer, pfas-free chemical formula. GreenScreen is a hazard assessment program that evaluates the hazard risks of chemicals to human health and the environment, including their ability to persist and bioaccumulate in nature, and other criteria. GreenScreen helps companies avoid swapping toxic chemical products for another.
U.S. regulations allow tens of thousands of chemical substances to enter our products, from clothing, toys, food packaging to household building materials. Environmentalists say these chemical substances have not been fully tested for potential hazards. In order to close the gap, in the past 10 years, some non-governmental organization-led hazard assessments, such as "Green Screen" (GreenScreen), have emerged to guide manufacturers toward more sustainable chemical substances.
Since the chemists and inventors Paul Anastas and John Warner (John Warner) first defined the principles of green chemistry, for two decades, green chemistry is a design for human health and Methods of environmentally safe chemicals and materials. NGOs working with big brands such as Google, Wal-Mart, and Target-such as the Green Chemistry and Business Council (GC3) and ChemFORWARD-are pushing companies to switch to safer chemical products and sending signals to chemical manufacturers that they Need to join. What lags behind, however, are the development of alternative chemicals and regulations to accelerate the transition.
From green to sustainable
Green chemistry is a strategy to prevent harm by designing chemicals and materials that are safe for humans and ecosystems. Its principles include effective use of resources; elimination of toxic ingredients, hazardous waste and hazardous by-products; and energy efficiency throughout the product life cycle.
As it enters the business arena, companies and some NGOs call it sustainable chemistry because it "sends all the right voices to management and [other] decision makers," Michelle Jia, co-director of GC3 Bell (Michele Jalbert) said. GC3 is a cooperative organization composed of 120 organizations, including green chemistry start-ups, retail giants and government agencies focused on accelerating the application of green chemistry in manufacturing. She said that sustainable chemistry adopts green chemistry principles and adds elements that support commercialization and recycling.
"I think nothing can be done without a safer and better chemical reaction, because it exists in everything we touch," Jalbert said.
Disclosure drive action
In order to produce products that are better for human health and the environment, you must know what your suppliers use to make the products they ship to you. But "20 years ago, most companies didn't know what ingredients their products contained...unless required by law," the executive director of Clean Production Action, the book "Green Screen" The co-author of Mark Rossi (Mark Rossi) said.
Chemical formulations are usually proprietary, which is why companies may not know what is in their supply chain. Nonetheless, "the idea that you can disclose the chemical composition of the product has been strongly resisted," Rossi said.
However, in recent years, the manufacturing industry has seen what Rossi calls "a huge change in transparency."
For example, Levi's relies on hundreds of suppliers to produce jeans. The cotton spinning mill spins cotton into yarn, dyes it, and coats it with various coatings, such as waterproof coatings. Other suppliers are responsible for cutting and sewing jeans, and laundry shops use chemicals to give the jeans the look and feel.
In the past, Levi's left the choice of dyes and finishing products to factories and laundries in the supply chain, as long as they comply with existing regulations and company policies. But then, the "Detox My Fashion Campaign" launched by Greenpeace in 2011 promoted the company to control pollution in the supply chain, promising to achieve zero emissions of harmful chemicals by 2020 and stop using certain Chemical material.
