Detergents - Older legislation

Expired legislation

• Commission Recommendation 98/480/EC concerning good environmental practice for household detergents.

Repealed legislation

• Commission Recommendation 89/542/EEC for the labelling of detergents and cleaning products.
• Directive 86/94/EEC defined the BiAS method that is applicable to non-ionic containing 6-30 alkylene oxide (polyglycol) groups.
• Directive 82/243/EEC updated testing methods in 73/405/EEC adding the British "porous" test. It defined an anionic surfactant as one that responds to the MBAS method, so that important classes fell outside its scope.
• Directive 82/242/EEC covering non-ionic surfactants closely parallels the 82/243/EEC in specifying an 80% pass level and introduced a derogation clause for temporary use of certain surfactants.
• Directive 73/405/EEC covering anionic (70% market share) surfactants already recognised the unreliability of primary biodegradability tests and establish that these surfactants must degrade by at least 80%.
• Directive 73/404/EEC on the approximation of the laws of the Member States relating to detergents methods of testing, covering anionic, non-ionic, cationic and amphoteric surfactants and prohibiting marketing where average level of biodegradability was below 90%.