American Apparel & Footwear Association (AAFA) Restricted Substances List (RSL)

Tool Category	Website	Owner/Sponsor	Entity Type	Product Categories
Restricted Substances Lists	https://www.wewear.org/industry-resources/restricted-substances-list/	American Apparel & Footwear Association	nonprofit	Apparel/Footwear/Outdoor Industry; Textiles

The AAFA Restricted Substance List (RSL) is intended to provide apparel and footwear companies with information on chemicals and other substances whose presence in finished home textile, apparel, and footwear products is restricted through a government regulation or law. The list identifies the most restrictive iteration of that regulation world wide.  Every six months, the publication is reviewed, updated, and the latest version is made available for free to the apparel and footwear industry.

What Is Evaluated?

Focus	Impacts
Chemicals Materials Products Companies	Ecological health Human health Social responsibility Materials efficiency Energy use

Description

AAFA's RSL, created by a working group of the AAFA's Environmental Task Force, is useful for assuring environmental compliance with global regulations. For each chemical, the RSL identifies the most restrictive regulation. It can also be used to call attention to substances that may be of emerging concern in this industry sector but are currently regulated by only a few governments. AAFA has created an additional non-regulated annex for its members based on the work done by the AFIRM group. This annex includes chemicals that are neither regulated nor proven to be dangerous, but may be of note to the industry.

Access to the RSL is free and a direct link to the latest version is available as a PDF file on the AAFA website. Users are alerted to updates made since the last version.

Requirements

Not applicable

Cost

Available free of charge

Examples of Retailers That Use It

Gap, NIKE, VF, Carhartt, UnderArmour

For More Information

703-524-1864