Japan SDA NEWS

December 2011

CLEAN AGE Summary

No. 34-2 (December 2011)

Inside of this issue
◆1.International Activity of JSDA
◆2.Key Events Related to JSDA in the Last 10 Years

1.International Activity of JSDA

Japan Soap & Detergent Association (JSDA) has been positioning its international activity as one of important activities and has proactively interacted with associations in other countries. Specifically, JSDA continues internal discussion on common topics across the world such as environmental issues and chemical management, while announcing JSDA’s activities and achievements in international conferences. Here are two recent examples which JSDA made.

• CICIE 2011

China International Cleaning Industry Expo (CICIE) held in Beijing, China on May 24 to 28, 2011 was the first industrial exhibition that CCIA (China Cleaning Industry Association) sponsored.
About 90 household and professional cleaning product manufacturers both in and out of the country participated and provided various commercial approaches such as product demonstration and sample distribution in each exhibition booth.
JSDA, as a member of INCPA (International Network of Cleaning Products Association), also provided a poster exhibition introducing JSDA activities.

• CESIO 2011

The 8th World Surfactant Congress was held in Vienna on June 6 to 8, 2011. The themes at the meeting are energy & environmental issues, applied technology of surfactant, safety assessment, etc. Its coverage is expanding every year, and there were 56 exhibition booths from affiliated manufacturers and universities. In the meeting, JSDA presented the result of the surfactant concentration monitoring study which has been long conducted by the association on rivers in Japan. In addition, a major interest was drawn in the presentation given by Prof. Masaru Oya of YOKOHAMA National University who attended the meeting as an academic professional. His presentation focused on the difficulty of letting consumers scientifically understand a chemical substance and importance of the education activity.

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2. Key Events Related to JSDA
in the Last 10 Years

In summary, formation of recycling society became an important issue at beginning of the 21st century. In order to deal with this issue, JSDA has been seeking measures which secure chemical management and product safety & relief, while coping with an environmental problem as the whole industry. Along with reinforcement of international activity, JSDA plans to strengthen its capacity on information sharing and cooperation with associations in other countries. Regarding the business, fats and oil production is increasing every year. Especially, the growth of vegetable-origin fats and oil is remarkable on the global basis, while animal-origin fats and oil continues reducing.

● 2000

"Law for Promotion of Sorted Collection and Recycling Containers and Packaging" is fully enforced. The industry also carried out 3R activity (Reduce, Reuse and Recycle) and placed major effort to promote sales of refill products.

<JSDA Activity>
◊ Sponsored a campaign "Earth Polishing Prize", which officially commended the activity of schoolchildren who contributed to the awareness improvement of environmental issues (this campaign continued till 2007)
◊ Opened the homepage.
<Other Events>
◊ HERA (Human & Environmental Risk Assessment) project started in Europe.

● 2001

JSDA announced at a press conference that washing machine with zero-detergent-use program introduced by one of domestic electric appliance manufacturers had an important deficiency from a viewpoint of soil removal and damage of garments.

◊ Sponsored a campaign "Original Sticker Contest for Washing Hands" for schoolchildren (this campaign continued till 2007).
◊ Developed voluntary labeling standard on quality of fabric softener.
◊ Opened the homepage in English.
◊ Held the 3rd ASDAC (Asia Soap & Detergent Association Conference) in Taiwan.
<Other Events>
◊ Washing machine which has larger capacity, program to save water or program to wash in short time overwhelmed in the market.
◊ Laundry product which claimed reducing malodor out of laundry when line-dried in the room appeared in the market.

● 2002

Measurement points in rivers were extended in the surfactant concentration monitoring study, which JSDA has conducted since 1998, while adding AO as another measurement item.

<JSDA Activity>
◊ Launched Human and Environmental Safety Technical Committee.
◊ Sent a survey group to Europe to investigate the oreo-chemical market (Fats & Oils Committee).
<Other Events>
◊ All ingredients labeling of cosmetics was enforced.
◊ International price of fats and oil raw materials soared.
◊ World Oreo-chemical Conference was held in Spain after 10 years interval.

● 2003

JSDA launched Communication Promotion Special Committee. Seminar for media, "Detergent we want you to know more", was conducted.

<JSDA Activity>
◊ Developed voluntary standard on the safety of acid products and products with chlorinated agent (The Safety Council for Cleaner and Bleaching Agents).
◊ Held the 4th ASDAC in China.
<Other Events>
◊ Automatic dish-washer detergent market gradually expanded along with the penetration of automatic dishwashers.
◊ SARS out-broke in Asia. National Institute of Infectious Diseases announced "Dish washing detergent is effective to manage the SARS corona-virus". This resulted in increased demand of dish washing detergent.
◊ OECD announced that LAS has no negative effect to the human health.
◊ GHS (The Globally Harmonized System of Classification and Labeling of Chemicals) was announced as the U.N. advice.
◊ Price of vegetable fats and oil soared.

● 2004

JSDA launched GHS Implementation Working Group.

<JSDA Activity>
◊ Determined technical approaches to cope with the enforcement of revised Act on the Evaluation of Chemical Substances and Regulation of Their Manufacture, etc. (Human and Environmental Safety Technical Committee, etc.).
◊ Supported Ministry of the Environment on development of chemical substance fact sheet.
◊ Sent a survey group to China to investigate the fats and oil market (Fats & Oils Committee).

● 2005

OECD publicly announced that LAS has no negative impact on environmental safety, following previous announcement that it has no negative impact on human safety

<JSDA Activity>
◊ Conducted a survey among local governments whether there is a measure against synthetic detergent or guidance for soap promotion.
◊ Sent a survey group to the US to understand the BSE status and development of new glycerin application (Fats & Oils Committee).

◊ Sponsored the 5th ASDAC held in Tokyo.
<Other Events>
◊ Demand of rapeseeds increased for the use in biodiesel. Market price of soybean also increased due to expanded market in China.

● 2006

JSDA established own objective to reduce plastic usage in containers and packaging by 30% in 2010 versus 1995. (Achieved 37% reduction on the product net weight basis in 2009.)

<JSDA Activity>
◊ Sent an open question letter to four local governments which supported opposition movement against synthetic detergent.
◊ Established degerming labeling standard of dishwashing detergent and hard-surface cleaner (Soap & Detergent Fair Trade Conference).
◊ Established voluntary labeling standard of medicated soap.
<Other Events>
◊ The ban of detergent containing LAS in franchise stores of Co-op Net was removed.

● 2007

JSDA founded the research support system for effective use of glycerin.

<JSDA Activity>
◊ Conducted "Clean Seminar" for general audience, in which "Safety of Chemical Substance" was presented.
◊ Published risk assessment document of fluorescent whitening agent.
◊ Conducted a survey to search removal ratio of surfactant (specifically, LAS, AE and AO) in a sewage treatment plant, and confirmed that the removal ratio was more than 99% for all the surfactants.
◊ Held the 6th ASDAC in Taiwan.

● 2008

Rise of fats and oil price was accelerated. The crude oil price reached to record high at $147/barrel in the New York stock exchange market.

<JSDA Activity>
◊ Revised voluntary standard on the safety of acid products and products with chlorinated agent by strengthening statement for accidental inhalation prevention (The Safety Council for Cleaner & Bleaching Agents).
◊ Participated in APEC CD, and began activity towards obtaining approval of the GHS implementation guidance drafted by JSDA.

● 2009

Demand of hand washing soap increased due to outbreak of new strain of influenza. Sales of liquid product increased from approx. 19 thousand tons in 2000 to approx. 70 tons in 2009.

◊ Started a clean campaign, "Poster Contest - Let's wash hands for clean hands!"
◊ Officially published the GHS implementation guidance of household consumer products.
◊ Held the 7th AOSDAC in Australia (Asia Oceania Soap & Detergent Associations Conference, renamed from ASDAC previously).
<Other Events>
◊ Laundry detergent claiming only one rinsing cycle appeared in the market.

● 2010

JSDA conducted a human and environmental safety risk assessment on AO, and announced the result which showed no risk on human and environmental safety.

<JSDA Activity>
◊ Launched a working group to examine chemical composition disclosure labeling for detergent, etc.
◊ Sent a survey group to Philippines and Malaysia (Fats & Oils Committee).

◊ Participated in the 7th WCD (World Conference on Detergent) held in Switzerland and provided poster exhibition and oral presentation.