Forum Groupe, a partner company of Alma Fashion, to meet the needs of its customers and with the full conviction that the world of fashion must also strive for the proper use of natural resources, pursued and obtained in September 2019 its G.R.S certification 4.0 (Global Recycled Standard).
GRS is a voluntary standard (i.e. it is not imposed regulation) owned by Textile Exchange, one of the largest and most important non-profit organizations on the planet that aims to reduce wastage of natural resources, by reducing the production of raw materials from virgin resources, with the resulting increase in the use of recycled materials (pre- and post-production).
GRS is a third-party certification (that is, conducted by professionals outside the company and accredited by Textile Exchange) that aims to ensure two main aspects:
- The custody chain of the recycled product (i.e. that it is identified and that it has a content of not less than 20% of the components derived from recycling; that this material is identified and followed throughout the value-production line without the possibility of confusion.
- That the social compliance conditions (human and civil rights of workers) and safety conditions are present and systematically respected at the company applying for the GRS certificate.
In order to ensure that the chain of custody complies with the GRS standard, a chain of certificates for each transaction (sale) must be exchanged between certified companies, necessary if GRS labeling is to be used on the garments, or even simply promote the fact that such garments comply with the GRS standard.
If the final customers wish to use the GRS name or GRS label to advertise their products, produced in the Forum Groupe, they shall:
- be GRS certified;
- obtain from Forum Groupe the (purchase) transaction certificate of those specific products.
Forum Groupe, as a GRS certified company, may obtain the sales certificate (transaction) to be delivered to its customer, but shall:
- have obtained the certificate of purchase (transaction) of the fabric used for the parts sold by the textile manufacturer;
- have demonstrated that Forum Groupe has kept the GRS standard’s demands under its product management line.
The textile manufacturer will in turn have to have the purchase certificate (transaction) from the producer of recycled yarn.
It is therefore a very tight surveillance chain that makes the idea of motivation, so GRS is the most serious standard in the world (spread in more than 50 countries) and gives consumers greater certainty that worn clothes are truly and unquestionably composed of at least 20% of recycled raw material.
