The Global Recycle Standard (GRS) was originally developed by Control Union Certifications (CU) in 2008. in 2011 ownership of the standard has been given to Textile Exchange (TE). in 2012 March TE has released GRS version 2.1, which will totally effect from 01st June 2012. Significant change of version 2.1 is removal of 'pre-industrial' waste and GRS claims keep remained up to pre-consumer and post consumer waste only. (Please find more about Textile Exchange on www.textileexchange.org)
This standard is intended for companies that wish to make a content claim on the amount of recycled material in the final product. The GRS is based on a tracking and tracing principle used for certified products; in addition, issues pertaining to environmental and social criteria are also incorporated in line with requests from various leading members in the industry. A further choice was made in the development of this standard to adopt a transaction certificate system. This provides a superior monitoring and controlling mechanism within both supply and value chains to further ensure the integrity of certified final products.
The standard may apply to companies that trade and/or produce the end product or half (finished) product containing recycle material to enter the GRS program. The range of products to be certified is inspired by, but not limited to textile products. In case the party is outsourcing the production of the end product partially or completely, the units involved then have to comply with GRS as well.
At present CU is the only certification body that offers a fully integrated certification process of the GRS, and other certification bodies may be added in the future.
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