OEKO-TEX will be 25 years old in 2017 and it has reviewed the requirements of its products and has published the new regulations at the beginning of the year. An overview of some of the changes:

MADE IN GREEN and MySTeP

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.

STeP

After three years on 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 have been 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 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.

STANDARD 100

The new regulations for STANDARD 100 by OEKO-TEX will come definitely into force on 1 April 2017 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 polyfluorinated 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.

These new requirements allow the OEKO-TEX Association to provide significant support for both the Zero Discharge of Hazardous Chemicals (ZDHC) initiative and the Detox campaign. These new changes will help OEKO-TEX further increase awareness in the textile manufacturing chain regarding the responsible handling of potentially hazardous substances in textile products and sustainable production in 2017.