Basis of REACH is toxicity survey.
Its scale will be bigger than RoHS Directive.

The RoHS Directive, which bans the placing on the EU market of electrical, precision apparatus and information equipment containing 6 designated items including lead and cadmium, came into force in July 2006, and Japanese related industries were forced to spend a vast amount of money to comply with it. Many of companies in the chemical industry (including the surfactant industry) in Japan are bewildered, as the scale of the new REACH regulations is larger than RoHS. They are both directly and indirectly exporting products to Europe which are manufactured domestically and abroad. For example, chemical substances that they provide to China are used in Chinese dyeing firms for textiles, and those finished products are exported to Europe, where importers would avoid importing products violating REACH with the burden of self-responsibility, and this would lead manufacturers to produce REACH-accredited textile products which are marketable as exports. What the EU expects is that this cyclical framework will be effective.

L. Ermenegildo Zegna & Figli has sufficiently prepared for REACH since 2005.

Mr. Bruno Randi, marketing manager of Lanificio Ermenegildo Zegna & Figli, a sister company of Italy's well known Ermenegildo Zegna, said, "we think it is possible to carry out dyeing with agreed materials in collaboration with chemical manufacturers as a way of dealing with REACH. We have been already examining finishing products including dyestuffs and agents in selecting the chemicals to use since 2005."

Toray and US Patagonia jointly promote recycled material from nylon 6.

Toray and US top-brand outdoor clothing firm Patagonia will jointly promote a line of recycled nylon 6 apparel. They will release work pants for autumn/winter 2007 and surfboard shorts for spring 2008 under the Patagonia product names 'Men's Weekender Pants' and 'Wavefarer Board Shorts' to be sold at a total of 2,000 stores in 12 around the world.
In this approach, Toray will reproduce nylon 6 fiber by melting irregular products left over from manufacturing nylon 6, making it into chips and spinning it again. Patagonia will produce and sell clothing made of this recycled nylon 6.
Clothing made of this recycled material can be produced with about one-sixth of the energy used for crude-derived virgin nylon 6, and, what is more, carbon-dioxide emissions during production are greatly reduced to about one-fifth.

Kuraray Plastics develops sheeting using PLA resin.

Kuraray Plastics has developed sheeting using corn-based PLA resin, and will promote it as environment-friendly sheeting in terms of reducing CO₂, a contributor to global warming, to ecologically-minded local governments and companies. According to the company, this newly developed sheeting using PLA resin performs just as well as conventional tarpaulin sheeting (in strength and printing property), and has the same texture (in flexibility and hand).

The sheeting is a sandwich composite sheeting of polyester as ground fabric enveloped in synthetic resin film. It is used in a wide range of fields from publicity such as banners and point of purchase (POP) advertising to construction-related products such as safety signs and curing sheets, utilizing its stronger and more stain-resistant characteristics compared to fabric and paper.

Newly-developed sheeting uses 100% PLA resin for ground fabric instead of polyester, and 70% for film. PLA resin is a hard material, but the flexibility appropriate for sheeting has been realized by combining it with acrylic thermoplastic elastomer developed by Kuraray.