Knowing What Chemicals Are in Products – Why transparency and traceability of chemicals are essential for product safety, circularity and the right to know

HEJSupport, the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation (SSNC) and groundWork South Africa are happy to announce a new report highlighting a fundamental challenge for the textile sector: we often do not know which chemicals are present in the fibres, materials, dyes, finishes and other components of the clothes and textiles we manufacture, purchase, reuse and recycle.

The report, Knowing What Chemicals Are in Products, explains why chemical transparency and traceability are essential for protecting workers, consumers and the environment—and for building a textile economy that is genuinely safe and circular.

Textile production involves complex global supply chains and the use of numerous chemicals at different stages of manufacturing and finishing. Yet information about chemical composition can become disconnected from textile materials and products as they move from chemical and fibre production through manufacturing, brands and retailers to consumers, reuse, recycling and waste management.

This information gap becomes particularly important as policies increasingly promote textile reuse and recycling. Circularity cannot be considered safe when recyclers and other downstream actors do not know which hazardous chemicals are present in the materials they handle. Recycling contaminated textiles can transfer chemicals of concern into recycled fibres and new products, perpetuating exposure rather than eliminating it.

The report therefore proposes a Globally Minimum Transparency Standard (GMTS) as a global benchmark for disclosing the identities of chemicals of concern in materials and products. Combined with Digital Product Passports (DPPs) and other Digital Product Information Systems, chemical information could remain linked to textile materials and products throughout their life cycle.

This is increasingly relevant for the textile sector. The EU Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation is introducing Digital Product Passports, while international initiatives are developing approaches for interoperable product information systems. These developments provide an important opportunity to ensure that chemical identity and hazard information become a core part of textile product information—not an afterthought.

Better transparency and traceability can support manufacturers in substituting hazardous chemicals, enable brands and retailers to make informed sourcing decisions, strengthen workers’ and consumers’ right to know, help regulators enforce chemical requirements, and allow recyclers to identify materials that can safely return to the economy.

For a global textile industry, global approaches also matter. Production often takes place in countries different from those where textiles are sold, consumed and eventually discarded. A harmonized minimum level of chemical information can help prevent double standards and ensure that workers, communities and consumers in producing countries receive the same level of protection as those in major consumer markets.

The report therefore calls for chemical transparency and traceability to become an integral part of emerging textile circularity, ecodesign, Digital Product Passport and chemicals policies, as well as implementation of the Global Framework on Chemicals and the Basel, Rotterdam, Stockholm and Minamata Conventions.

We cannot create a safe circular textile economy if we do not know which chemicals are in textiles. Chemical information must follow fibres, materials and products throughout their entire life cycle—from production to reuse, recycling and end-of-life.

Read the full report: