ZDHC welcomes chemical industry engagement

After an intense dialogue and a series of meetings during the past year between the ZDHC Board of Directors and the GCIRT, an alignment was gained on ZDHC organisational commitments and a mutual understanding of the role of chemical suppliers within the ZDHC Programme. This opens the doors for broader, more active distribution of chemistry expertise and implementation support of textile dye and leather chemical manufacturing industry in the ZDHC Programme.

As a consequence of the alignment the GCIRT signatory companies will each be joining the ZDHC Foundation as Contributors and uploading their products in the Chemical Module of the ZDHC Gateway via bluesign’s bluefinder tool.

In this, the fourth year of implementing the ZDHC Programme, the ZDHC Foundation exclusive focus is to accelerate the phase out of hazardous chemistry in the textile and leather value chain based on the use of ZDHC tools and standards. Furthermore, over time ZDHC will evolve the ZDHC Programme from a brand driven to a multi-stakeholder initiative with balanced roles and responsibilities within the ZDHC Programme.

GCIRT Speaker: “This is a critical milestone towards addressing the demand for a cleaner and transparent supply chain. The engagement of leading chemical suppliers makes the ZDHC Programme implementation efforts more robust to mitigate societal and environmental risk for all textile and leather value chain stakeholders. It is only by working together that we will be able to shift the needle in the way we tackle urgent sustainability challenges in the textile and leather industry.”

Frank Michel, Executive Director, ZDHC Foundation: “To further accelerate the transformation of our industry we need to engage with all relevant participants of the value chain to shape the ZDHC Programme from a finite ‘roadmap to 2020’ mission to an infinite ZDHC Programme with broad multi-stakeholder support.”

Charles Dickinson, Chair of the ZDHC Board of Directors: “We are all in agreement, that the current situation of proliferation of detox approaches and their supporting testing schemes is ineffective and costly. Therefore, we acknowledge that we share a common objective in the alignment of resources that drive better chemistry and innovations that reduce the chemical and environmental footprint of the textile and leather industries”

The alignment with the chemical suppliers focuses on a harmonised industry approach to implementation that reduces duplicative efforts and complexity in the value chain whilst clarifying and strengthening the role of the chemical industry as a whole in the ZDHC Programme: