Making a fresh start in the beginning of the new year, Oeko-Tex has reviewed the requirements of its products and published its new regulations. A large number of new changes will be made to Made In Green, MySTeP, STeP, and Standard 100. Oeko-Tex are independent textile testing institutes working for enhanced product safety and sustainable production in the textile value chain.
The Oeko-Tex Association has established a new price strategy for the Made in Green by Oeko-Tex product label to fully satisfy market requirements. The new pricing offers label issuers the option to use smaller packets of labels, or even a single label for their product to be labelled with Made In Green by Oeko-Tex.
After having been for three years in the market, Oeko-Tex has revised the STeP by Oeko-Tex limit value tables in Annex G1 and G2 of the standard document. These revisions were influenced by ongoing changes in the global environment, input from customers and current regulatory developments. A new chapter has been added in Annex D: “Hazardous Processes That Should Be Avoided”. These processes that are to be avoided include the use of potentially hazardous surfactants, sodium hypochlorite (as a bleaching agent) and defoamers that are potentially damaging to the environment.
The new regulations for Standard 100 by Oeko-Tex will come into force on April 1 following a three-month transition period. At the parameter ‘per- and polyfluorinated compounds’, a large number of substances have been added or listed explicitly by name in product class I (items for babies and small children) and provided with limit values. As a result, in product class I, the use of per- and poly fluorinated compounds is severely restricted and nearly eliminated. A large number of substances are also included in the list of regulated softeners (phthalates) in all of the product classes. The three organic tin compounds dipropyltin (DPT), monophenyltin (MPhT) and tetraethyltin (TeET) are now regulated with limit values in all product classes. In addition, the use of the blue colourant Navy Blue is also now explicitly prohibited for product certification according to Standard 100 by Oeko-Tex.
