Home Depot, Lowe's, Lumber Liquidators and Menards, the four major home decoration and building materials retailers in the United States, announced that they will eliminate toxic phthalates (phthalates) contained in PVC flooring by the end of this year (2015).
Phthalate ester chemicals are used to make PVC plastic soft and elastic. According to survey reports, among the PVC flooring products currently on the market in the United States, more than 58% PVC floors have been detected with phthalates, and more than 50% contains a variety of plasticizers. Under normal use, phthalates in flooring can escape into the air and enter the human body through breathing or contact. There have been many research reports confirming that the presence of phthalates threatens human health, causes asthma and causes harm to male reproductive organs, brain development and the immune system, and the U.S. federal government has banned them since 2009. Phthalates are added to children's products.
Therefore, after a year of hard work, Home Depot cooperated with environmental groups and actively communicated with its PVC floor supply chain to reach a consensus and promote a comprehensive ban on phthalates in PVC flooring. Home Depot is not only the largest jewelry and building materials retailer in the United States, but also the largest brand in the world. Domestic sales of flooring in the United States alone have an annual turnover of more than 6 billion US dollars. In view of this, American building materials retailers Lowe's, Lumber Liquidators and Menards have also actively followed suit and jointly promoted the floor detoxification policy in the supply chain.
Recently, Lumber Liquidators has launched a policy to prohibit contaminated PVC plastic recycling materials from entering the plastic flooring supply chain. The use of recycled PVC plastic regenerated materials is no longer news in the PVC floor manufacturing industry. The starting point for manufacturers to use recycled PVC plastic regenerated materials is to save costs, rather than in response to international environmental protection trends. Many recycled PVC plastics come from recycled wires and electronic and electrical products. When Lumber Liquidators promotes a green supply chain, these recycled plastics are sent to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) certified laboratory for testing. The brief test report found that these recycled PVC plastics contain lead, cadmium, brominated flame retardants and possible polychlorinated biphenyls. In particular, the lead content exceeds 10,000 ppm, and the cadmium content exceeds 20,000 ppm. Therefore, the policy plan promoted by Lumber Liquidators limits the lead content in flooring to no more than 100 ppm to prevent recycled plastics contaminated by harmful substances from entering the product manufacturing process to provide consumers with safer product choices.
It is recommended that the vast number of small and medium-sized enterprises in the domestic building materials and home decoration industry start to actively pay attention to whether the raw materials used in the product manufacturing process contain the above-mentioned harmful substances. Only by leading industries to detoxify can they meet the requirements of the international green supply chain and be competitive in the international market.
Source:GreenBiz (2015-12-11) (PIDC compilation)
