The dye house’s main customers have all adopted the Zero Discharge of Hazardous Chemicals (ZDHC) “Manufacturing Restricted Substances List (mRSL).The most important consideration for the dye house is to make sure it can comply with the ZDHC mRSL requirements. As a first step, we can move directly into the Textile Guide Database. On the main page of the database, we have a drop-down menu called “Filter the Textile Guide”. Click the drop- down menu and go to the filter option called “Lists”.
Depending on what you are interested in, you are able to filter the database. If other restricted substance lists would apply to your situation, you can add them as well. Remember the dye house was interested in the ZDHC mRSL so let’s select that. Then click the button “filter”.
This will give you a list of 225 substances. This is a rather big list and the dye house needs to communicate it to your chemical suppliers to make sure their formulations are safe to use in their processes.
If you are only interested in specific dyes and pigments, you could choose to filter for such substances as well. Go to the filter “Functional groups” and tick the box “Dyes and Pigments” and it will give you 58 results instead. Note that auxiliary chemicals such as solvents, even if they are used in dyeing formulations are not included in this example.
For now we remove this filter and return to the 225 substances we want to communicate to our suppliers.
So now the dye house wants to have more information on each chemical. By clicking the “Info” button as seen on each chemical they can see exactly which of the lists include a specific substance and which companies have restricted a particular substance.
Now the dye house is ready to share the list with its suppliers. To do that, click the button “Add all”. This will move all 225 substances to the working list. To share this list you should press “Save” in the top, this will allow you to choose a name for your list, let’s call this one “Dye house List”. As soon as you have done this, the database will create a unique randomized URL as seen in the top of the window.
The “Save” icon is now replaced by a “Share” icon instead. You click it, and it will open your email-client inserting your unique URL. You are now ready to share it with customers, suppliers or colleagues. Once they click on your link, they will see exactly what you see on the screen. You also have the option to print it or export your working list to an Excel file.
