Gore promotes GRS status and promises more recycled laminates
The Gore Fabrics Division has gained Global Recycled Standard (GRS) certification in both of its manufacturing sites, in Shenzhen, China and Putzbrunn, Germany.
GRS is an international standard that sets requirements for third-party certification of recycled content, social and environmental practices, chemical restrictions and chain of custody.
It describes the certification as a milestone in its efforts to reduce the environmental footprint of providing high performance products.
Originally the GRS was developed by Control Union Certifications in 2008 and ownership was passed to Textile Exchange in 2011. The GRS is intended for use with any product that contains at least 20% GRS certified recycled material; final products carrying the GRS logo must contain at least 50% GRS certified recycled material.
Thomas Kiebler, global application engineer leader at W. L. Gore & Associates, said: “Transparency guides the way the Gore Fabric Division is operating and building trust with buyers, customer, end-users, and partners. Therefore, we decided to become certified according to the Global Recycled Standard to ensure traceability of recycled content used in our products.
“This success was only possible because of huge efforts undertaken by our manufacturing sites and beyond. We conducted pre-audits and implemented the environmental, social and chemical requirements of the standard which have not been covered yet by our existing certifications e.g. bluesign and ISO 14001.
“After having successfully obtaining the GRS certification, we are now embedding the processes and requirements into our existing management system to ensure we maintain the certification and will continuously improve our performance.”
