CARE LABELING RULE Agency Information Collection Activities; Proposed Collection; Comment Request

On January 16, 2018, the Federal Trade Commission published in the Federal Register (83 FR 2156) Agency Information Collection Activities; Proposed Collection; Comment Request

The Care Labeling Rule requires manufacturers and importers to attach a permanent care label to all covered textile clothing in order to assist consumers in making purchase decisions and in determining what method to use to clean their apparel. Also, manufacturers and importers of piece goods used to make textile clothing must provide the same care information on the end of each bolt or roll of fabric.

Estimated annual hours burden: 32,600,587 hours (solely relating to disclosure).

Staff estimates that approximately 10,744 manufacturers or importers of textile apparel, producing about 18.4 billion textile garments annually, are subject to the Rule's disclosure requirements. The burden of developing proper care instructions may vary greatly among firms, primarily based on the number of different lines of textile garments introduced per year that require new or revised care instructions. Staff estimates the burden of determining care instructions to be 100 hours each year per firm, for a cumulative total of 1,074,400 hours. Staff further estimates that the burden of drafting and ordering labels is 80 hours each year per firm, for a total of 859,520 hours. Staff believes that the process of attaching labels is fully automated and integrated into other production steps for about 40 percent of the approximately 18.4 billion garments that are required to have care instructions on permanent labels. For the remaining 11.04 billion items (60 percent of 18.4 billion), the process is semi-automated and requires an average of approximately ten seconds per item, for a total of 30,666,667 hours per year. Thus, the total estimated annual burden for all firms is 32,600,587 hours (1,074,400 hours to determine care instructions + 859,520 hours to draft and order labels + 30,666,666 hours to attach labels).

Estimated annual cost burden: $214,221,229 (solely relating to labor costs).

DATES: Comments must be received on or before March 19, 2018.