Esprit, the international fashion and lifestyle brand with Californian heritage, has announced its achievement in the removal of all Perfluorinated chemicals (PFCs) from its supply chain. The company has committed to working with its supply partners to eliminate potentially hazardous chemicals in the manufacturing process with the support of NGO Greenpeace.
Esprit said in a statement, “We promised to remove all PFCs from the manufacture of our products by the end of December 2014. We are pleased to announce that this goal was achieved on all products sold in our stores from August this year, four months ahead of schedule. By doing this, we contribute to removing 54.3 tons/year2 of PFC based chemistry from out supply chain.”
For many years, phthalates have been banned by Esprit in the manufacturing process and from April 2013, the company applied the same ban to the intentional use of alkylphenol ethoxylates (APEOs), a chemical used for textile production. Over the past year, Esprit has continued to work alongside other brands as proactive members of the Zero Discharge of Hazardous Chemicals (ZDHC) Group. The collaboration has created a restriction to stop the use of other chemicals as outlined in the Manufacturing Restricted Substance List (MRSL).
In the last 18 months, Esprit tested and assessed the discharge from 33 of its core facilities in China and one in Bangladesh, reporting 42 percent of the results publically on the IPE web platform.
“While we will maintain this number and continue to test, this will become the measure of improvement made as we turn our focus to the introduction of the MRSL and positive chemistry,” Esprit noted.