The election of a new president who has vowed to roll back regulations in many areas — coupled with the majorities in the House and Senate — has many in the apparel, retail and footwear businesses wondering what chemical regulation will look like in the new administration.
The industry — which is a top user of regulated chemicals throughout the manufacturing process — thought they knew last summer, when President Obama signed the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act, an update to the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). Endorsed by the AAFA, it gives the EPA the authority to evaluate chemicals suspected of being the most dangerous to human health, and restrict, reduce or eliminate their use.
The Lautenberg Act process requires the EPA to select and evaluate the most dangerous chemicals first, which will take months or years. Businesses have time to adjust, and local jurisdictions won't be able to pass new laws regulating toxics that come under the EPA's regulatory purview, which is called "state and local preemption." Some existing state laws still stand under the Act — such as Proposition 65, California's requirement for consumer notification of possible toxic substance exposure. But overall, the Lautenberg Act created a more orderly, predictable process, so the AAFA supported it.
Enter President-elect Trump
Now, it's difficult to guess whether the Lautenberg Act will be repealed or changed in the wake of Donald Trump's ascent to the presidency. While experts say it's hard to predict with absolute certainty, the Lautenberg Act stands a good probability of surviving regime change, especially since — unlike many regulatory laws — many businesses had supported it in its final form. We caught up with the American Apparel and Footwear Association recently, and had the following discussion on the future of the Lautenberg Act.
"The Lautenberg Act had so much bipartisan support on both sides, and while it wasn't a perfect law, everybody got some of what they wanted," says Danielle Iverson, director of government relations at the AAFA. "Environmentalists and even the public supported it, too. I just don't see [repeal or crippling of Lautenberg] as being high on the priority list," she says.
"We are not advising our members to delay implementing Lautenberg," she adds.
The industry has another reason to implement the new law. Consumers want to know their clothes are safe, and they're increasingly savvy and concerned about chemicals in their everyday lives, especially when it concerns items that regularly come into contact with their bodies.
Toxic substances compliance puts a premium on transparency
In the face of so much uncertainty, perhaps the best strategy is to develop a very flexible, automated strategy for compliance so that when the dust settles and it's clear what the new rules will be, change is much easier.
A flexible, software-based approach not only helps companies comply with the Lautenberg Act revisions to TSCA — or any compliance directives, for that matter. It also helps with the heavy tracking and documentation demands that are always placed on apparel and footwear supply chains that now span more countries, suppliers, laws and trading partners than ever before.
The problem can be quite daunting. A single shoe or jacket could include materials from dozens of suppliers, from the producers of the material, to the makers of buttons, zippers, decorations, laces, ties, dyes and all the chemicals that make things water-resistant, wrinkle-resistant, spot-resistant, fire-resistant or give it special thermal properties. And each one of these items is potentially a compliance violation—or a brand-protection problem.
So even without regulation changes, the fashion industry has other good reasons to up its game in cutting back on toxics. Customers are increasingly demanding that what they wear is safe for their health — and their families'. Additionally, many consumers now want to know that their fashion choices don't pose a threat to the environment, either in their manufacture or disposal.
Supply chain transparency builds trust
In the end, the ultimate goal is transparency and the trust that goes with it—trust in one's trading partners, and ultimately, consumers trust in the brands they buy. It's hard to trust what you can't see.
But even some fairly large names in fashion are still trying to manage compliance and build networks of trusted suppliers using nothing more than spreadsheets, Iverson confirms.
"Based on AAFA's CSR benchmarking survey, an internal study of the industry, we found that the majority of companies still use spreadsheets to manage their compliance," she says.
Unfortunately, a spreadsheet can't track compliance to many different standards simultaneously. It doesn't send out alerts or show you whose test results or documents aren't done or don't comply. And with complex global supply chains, the fashion industry needs to track and manage the compliance of all of the companies, products and inputs in its supply chain.
It only takes one mistake — anywhere — to wreck a brand
The only feasible way for most big-name apparel makers and retailers to achieve that transparency reliably is to automate as much as they can, so their people can "manage by exception"—without incurring so many extra costs that compliance becomes a huge component of the cost of goods sold.
Fashion demands flexible, active transparency
Using automated rules-based systems, it's fairly easy to reflect these updates, manage to federal and state laws, and verify that different items made by different manufacturers all meet these changing regulatory limits.
Also, when a system is flexible and automated, changes in regulatory regime — like the recent sudden shift in government — become much easier to deal with, even in times of great uncertainty. Plus, good, general-purpose systems handle far more than toxics compliance, including such things as product safety, fair labor laws and labeling requirements.
And in an industry that thrives on changes in consumer expectations —fashion, in other words— that's golden.
Artilce copied from
apparel.edgl.com
