Nikwax designs products to be safe for use in the home and safe for the environment.
 

Global leader in safe, high performance waterproofing, cleaning and conditioning for outdoor gear

 

Restricted Substances

At Nikwax we make products designed to be used in the home, where cross contamination of food and air is a real possibility. That is why we take such care to select only ingredients which we know to be safe, and avoid chemicals which pose a potential risk to human and environmental health.

All our aftercare products are manufactured in the UK, so our use of chemicals is regulated by the European REACH Legislation. But, as with many environmental issues, we feel the Law does not always go far enough, and can be slow to react to new information. In addition to compliance with the chemical restrictions defined by REACH, our own team of scientists, has developed a stricter list based on a precautionary approach. The Nikwax Manufacturing Restricted Substances List (MRSL) adopts the Zero Discharge of Hazardous Chemicals (ZDHC) MRSL and all known per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS or otherwise known as PFCs) as identified by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).


A copy of the Nikwax MRSL statement can be found here


Where there is concern over an ingredient’s safety within our formulations, we make our assessment by reviewing the scientific papers for ourselves. We maintain a healthy suspicion of studies carried out internally by large chemical companies, since their impartiality cannot always be guaranteed. To find out more about how we approach chemical safety, visit our Philosophy and Principles page.

Our compliance with both REACH, and our own RSL, is audited regularly as part of our ISO certificated Integrated Management System. Our ISO auditor is the British Standards Institution.