Textile Exchange

Brands, retailers, manufacturers, and others in the textile supply chain choose to become certified to a given voluntary standard to verify the claims they make about their products or the raw materials they contain. There are several claims made around the sustainability of textiles. In order to promote “truth in advertising,” many countries have established obligatory standards around the use of the word organic. These have typically been created for food, but some of these agricultural products, like cotton seed, are used for textiles and are therefore subject to the same regulations.

There are many things to consider when thinking about organic certification, but the three critical steps to ensuring the integrity of your organic claims are:

1.     Ensure that you are meeting the applicable labeling laws in the country of sale.

a.     For more information on labeling organic products in the US: (http://www.ams.usda.gov/AMSv1.0/nop)

b.     For labeling in Europe: (http://www.organic-europe.net/europe_eu/eu-regulation-on-organic-farming.asp)

c.     For labeling in Japan: (http://www.maff.go.jp/e/jas/specific/organic.html)

d.     For labeling in Canada: (http://www.inspection.gc.ca/english/fssa/orgbio/orgbioe.shtml)

2.     Ensure that the fiber has been certified to the appropriate standards - fiber certification is mandatory, but production certification is voluntary.

a.     Look at the following pages on our standards for more information.

1) OE Standards

2) Global Recycle Standard (GRS)

3) Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS)

4) Content Claim Standard (CCS)

3.     Verify the claim you are making about your product.

Thinking about these three steps will guide you to the other important parts of the process – choosing a certification agency, verifying that you’ve received the correct documentation, making product claims and using certification logos.

Note that if you are going to label your product as certified to a given standard (GOTS or OE for example), every step of the production process must be certified. Be sure to read through the standard to understand the certification and labeling requirements.