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Industry Information: The Dispute between “Cotton” Towels and “Soft” Towels! What are the tricks behind the one word difference? With the continuous enhancement of people's health awareness, sanitary and convenient disposable face towels are more and more popular. This is especially true for white-collar workers who travel frequently. A while ago, Ms. An, who was on a business trip, found that her face towel was used up, and she bought a pack of soft towels in a small supermarket. But when she wiped the water with a soft towel, she smelled a bad smell. She also specially used a soft towel dipped in pure water to try, still can smell the taste, so she went to check the ingredients of the product packaging, founded that it said "100% viscose fiber", not "100% cotton", the product name also used "soft" rather than "cotton", which made her concerned about the quality and safety of the product. Such concerns are not unique. On some social platforms, there are also many people posting that the face towel or soft towel bought back has a chemical smell and sour taste.  "Cotton" and "Soft" face towels have two faces? How should the public distinguish and choose? 01 One word difference, two materials In terms of category, cotton and soft towels belong to the broad category of soft towels. The new standard GB/T 40276-2021 "Soft Towels" implemented by the state in 2021 has "hardware" index requirements for soft towels from the aspects of internal quality, appearance quality, safety, and performance, and also has "software" provisions from the identification and packaging, but there is no definition of the use of the word "cotton" and "soft" in the marking specification of soft towels. This also gives some manufacturers who want to get around the ban an opportunity. 
GB/T 40276-2021 "Soft Towel" specification requirements for product identification
According to the "2021 Cotton Towel Survey Report", when purchasing cotton towels, 85% of respondents will pay attention to whether the material is 100% cotton. All cotton soft wipes made of natural cotton fibers provide people with a comfortable feeling of use due to their good water absorption, skin friendliness, and safety. At the same time, cotton fibers are renewable and can be naturally degraded in three months, making them green and environmentally friendly.  A "soft" towel with a word difference, although pronounced the same as a cotton towel in Chinese, is usually composed of a combination of one or more materials such as polyester fiber and viscose fiber.  GB/T 4146.1-2020 "Textile Chemical fibers Part 1: Genus name" pointed out that viscose fiber is made of wood fiber, cotton short velvet and other raw materials, through alkalization, aging, sulfonation and other processes to make soluble cellulose xanthan, then dissolved in dilute lye to make viscose, through chemical reaction by wet spinning and made of, in essence, artificial fiber. The polyester fiber is commonly known as "polyester", which raw material is mainly derived from petroleum extract, is a synthetic fiber. At the same time, we founded that some of the ingredients on the packaging will not be marked very fine, only marked "plant fiber", "natural plant fiber", which makes us have doubts. Is this kind of material pure natural?  According to GB/T 11951-2018 "Natural Fiber terminology", plant fibers belong to natural fibers, mainly including seed fibers, bast fibers, leaf fibers and fruit fibers. However, the "plant fiber" and "plant fiber" emphasized by some brands on the product publicity page, the actual composition is generally viscose fiber, which needs to go through a series of chemical processing and is not pure natural. In other words, the "soft towel" on the market, even the soft towel marked with "plant fiber", is likely to be the manufacturer's word game, in essence, belong to the chemical fiber.  Recently, some netizens found that some new packaging and the original packaging material labeling is not the same, in fact, this is the brand in accordance with GB/T 40276-2021 "soft towel" new national standard, the original packaging of "plant fiber" changed to "viscose fiber" and other real ingredients, unveiled the word game riddle.  Some viscose fiber production process to add carbon disulfide, the final product may have sulfide residues. The chemical and sour odors that some consumers smell are actually the odors produced by sulfides when they come into contact with water. According to Guangzhou Inspection and Testing Certification Group Co., Ltd, the test report on 15 hot-selling soft towel products on the market shows that: No chemical residue was detected in 2 products of the Whole Cotton Time, and a certain amount of residual sulfur was detected in the other 13 samples of viscose fiber/polyester viscose mixture. Although the residual sulfur content was in line with the "Soft towel" standard, it is recommended to choose more natural and skin-friendly cotton towels for baby’s mothers or people with sensitive skin. 02 How to identify the real pure cotton towel? Is the face towel pure cotton, can only be judged from the product name with "cotton" or "soft"? The answer is no. In August 2022, China Fiber Inspection issued the "Identification of soft towels and related quality issues Analysis and suggestions" on the market of six brands of soft towels were tested, and the results showed that the logo reflected "spunlaced non-woven fabric" or emphasized that the raw material was "plant fiber" and "plant cotton", and the fiber composition and content labeling was irregular or even wrong. 
Chart source: "The identification of soft towels and related quality problems analysis and suggestions"
Although there are many routines in the face towel market, the way to distinguish cotton and non-cotton soft towels before buying is actually very simple - look at the packaging or product information card. Only the product ingredients clearly marked as "100% cotton", "all cotton spunlaced non-woven fabric" words, is the real all-cotton soft towel.  If you only identify "spunlaced non-woven fabric" or "plant fiber", it is difficult to determine what the specific material of the soft towel is, and you need to further check the relevant component test report. Of course, today's consumers are no longer satisfied with reading the logo, and bloggers on the Internet have published experiments to test the contents of soft towels. One is the immersion method: Soak the soft towel in water, pure cotton soft towel has no odor, and some viscose fiber soft towel will have odor. The second is the combustion method: there is no black smoke after the burning of pure cotton soft towel, and the residue is fine and soft gray and black flocculent; The polyester fiber (polyester) soft towel has pungent black smoke after burning, and the residue is a hard and black block solid. 
Burning experiment of cotton soft towel (left) and polyester soft towel (right)
Li Yuhao, an expert at the China Industrial Textile Industry Association, explained that some viscose fibers may smell bad when exposed to water because carbon disulfide is added to the production process. Polyester (polyester) is a chemical fiber that does emit black smoke and form clumps when burned. Consumers can make simple judgments with the help of burning and soaking methods, but if they need more scientific and rigorous experimental conclusions, they can be handed over to professional inspection institutions. 03 Let the public consume clearly Today, soft towel (disposable face towel) with soft and delicate, good water absorption, no crumbs and other characteristics, has become a substitute for towels, paper towels and other products, a "face wash revolution" is being staged in the market. Data show that in 2022, China's face towel industry demand increased to 12.360 billion yuan, an increase of 51.8%. The consumer market has been "roaring ahead", attracting many cross-category brands to enter this track, and the number of industry brands is currently more than 500. In the fierce competition, the price of raw materials is an important factor. Data show that at the end of July 2023, China's cotton price index was 17,998 yuan/ton; The price of polyester staple fiber and filament fiber is 7428.91 yuan/ton and 8209.78 yuan/ton respectively. Because the cost of cotton is much higher than polyester and other chemical fibers, some manufacturers will choose lower cost chemical fiber materials.  "Chemical fibers and natural fibers have been used in the textile industry for a long time and are different in terms of performance, cost, safety properties, environmental properties and so on." Li Yuhao said that Chinese people generally have a greater sense of identity with pure cotton, and some businesses use "soft", "cotton", "plant fiber" to confuse the concept of the two. In order to avoid the use of chemical fiber, some companies do not use national standards for ingredient labeling, and consumers are prone to misunderstanding that the main component of their products is pure cotton. There are many kinds of soft towel brands, raw materials and specifications are not uniform, and even identification standards are not uniform. It has been two years since the release and implementation of the "soft towel" national standard, but because it is only a recommended standard, rather than a mandatory standard, we found that only a few enterprises in accordance with the requirements of the national standard to improve and improve the enterprise standard requirements, but the implementation of the standards of most enterprises has not improved, so the current soft towel industry still has non-standard, excessive publicity and other problems. In view of the confusion of product labeling on the market and the difficult choice of consumers, enterprises should standardize and accurately identify the ingredients of soft towel products, respect the right of consumers to know and choose, and at the same time, it is appropriate to use national standards, industry standards, or group standards and enterprise standards that are not lower than national standards. In the future, with the public paying more attention to raw materials and the pursuit of quality, the demand for soft towel products will become more and more diversified, and every enterprise will truly label the product ingredients, and give the choice of "chemical fiber or cotton" to consumers, in order to promote the soft towel industry and the quality of soft towel to be better improved. |
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