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The ambitious community project of DTB (Dialog Textil Bekleidung), BSI Sport and Walter & Partner will provide a solution-oriented approach to sustainability and transparency along the textile value chain.
Chemical and Environmental Management along the textile supply chain
Based on a Restricted Substances List (RSL), a database will be created as a platform that compares the chemical requirements between wet finishers in the Far East and textile manufacturers in Europe. This not only provides the directive, but also serves as a communication channel along the entire supply chain.
Responsible companies, textile manufacturers and associations must be committed in order to bring about social, ecological and economic improvements. Chemical and environmental management standards in global supply chains must be enforced to counter unsatisfactory social and environmental production conditions.
Radical reduction of time taken and testing costs
The implementation of the platform is of great relevance for all wet finishers in the Far East. It harmonises the requirements of numerous textile manufacturers and ensures transparent communication on sustainability standards. This means, that time and costs can be minimized in a drastic manner.
By meeting the requirements of textile companies, wet finishers will be able to work faster and better, thus increasing their order volume.
Every textile company that opt to use the platform, automatically speeds up the time taken testing procedures by eliminating the multiple tests of the same substances or products. Thus, they only have to pay a fraction of the conventional test costs.
Three stages of successfull sustainability
The online-based platform for chemical and environmental management will consist of three parts:
1. Pollutant database
2. Environment database
3. Green Chemicals database
Associations and textile manufacturers will submit a chemical ban list (RSL – restricted substances list), which can be accessed by the wet finishers in the Far East via the pollutant database.
Throughout the manufacturing process, the wet finishers place their environmental data into the environmental database and their product data into the pollutant database.
The "Green Chemicals database" was developed by textile and chemical manufacturers. It lists where "Manufacturing Restricted Substances List (MRSL)" compliant chemicals can be obtained.
This ensures fast and transparent communication, which facilitates the retrieval of RSL and MRSL guidelines.
Latest Microsoft cloud technology
The pollutant database will be developed by Walter & Partner and Microsoft with the latest cloud technology and will be available as an App. Right from the beginning, the solution will be platform independent, flexible scalable and thus suitable for any company. The connection to all ERP systems that are common to the market is also guaranteed - this ensures acceptance all down the line.
“Those who are not joining, will be left behind”
Hartmut Walter is well known for his visionary approaches. He is certain: "There will be no way past the pollutant database. Who does not participate, will fall by the wayside. In other industries, only the suppliers who adhere to the required standards are coming to the table."
Common potential for improvement
Representatives from industry, precursor, associations and testing institutes were highly interested in the presentation. Hartmut Walter entered into the dialogue, not to debate controversy, but to illustrate common potential for improvement.
Walter & Partner is working intensively on prototyping, which will be presented to the DTB Management Board by the end of January 2017