ZDHC MRSL.

A list of substances restricted from intentional use in textile, leather and footwear manufacturing, with limits per substance, aimed at the chemical inputs rather than at the finished garment. The sharpest fact on this beat is that ZDHC runs no certification scheme at all. Its own MRSL page says that rather than creating its own certification standard it recognises the ones already in the market, by awarding ZDHC Approved status to third-party certifiers, and what those certifiers produce is a conformance level for a chemical formulation, recorded in the ZDHC Gateway: level 0 is a supplier declaration, level 1 a third-party document or test review, level 2 a review of the supplier’s product stewardship, level 3 a site visit. ZDHC issues no certificate of its own, so “ZDHC certified” names nothing when it is said about a factory or a garment. On a bottle of ink it is loose shorthand for something narrower: a ZDHC Approved certifier certifies the chemical formulation to a conformance level, and that level is what the Gateway ranks. Pretreatment and ink vendors quote ZDHC loosely because the phrase sells, and the loose version travels straight into shop product pages. The question that gets a real answer is which conformance level, for which product code, on which Gateway record.