Climate and Nature Impact Awards
About
Recognizing emerging leaders and changemakers
Textile Exchange’s Climate and Nature Impact Awards recognizes individuals and partnerships making progress toward a regenerative and equitable raw materials economy.
From pioneering brands and retailers to producers, suppliers, farmers, and recyclers—achieving our climate and nature goals depends on action at every level of the supply network. These annual awards celebrate the individuals and partnerships creating measurable change in the way fibers and raw materials are produced.
NOMINATE
Nominations are now open
We want to celebrate the best projects, the most innovative partnerships, and the most exciting initiatives connected to the sourcing or production of raw materials that are delivering outstanding work for climate, nature, people, and animals.
To nominate yourself or put forward someone else who deserves recognition, fill out the form on the link below by June 30, 2026.
Eligibilty
This year's award categories
We’re looking for those who are moving the needle—reducing emissions, restoring ecosystems, and creating better outcomes for people, animals, and the planet.
Ryan Young Climate Leader Award
In memory of Ryan Young, our late COO and the visionary behind our Climate+ strategy, this award celebrates an individual demonstrating outstanding commitment, leadership, and tangible action in reducing emissions across fiber and raw material production. It recognizes those who are implementing practices that contribute to measurable, beneficial outcomes for climate and nature.
Collaboration for Global Impact Award
This award celebrates a standout collaboration between a brand and a Tier 4 organization working in partnership to drive action for the planet. The winning collaboration will demonstrate large scale efforts to protect, manage, and restore ecosystems, while delivering measurable impacts for nature.
We’re looking for a partnership that will serve as a leading example of how, by working in together, we can accelerate industry-wide progress toward achieving climate, nature, people, and animal welfare goals.
Regenerative Land Leadership Award
This award honors a fiber producer or supporting organization demonstrating leadership in implementing regenerative land management practices. It celebrates those who can show measurable progress through regenerative approaches, such as methods that help restore ecosystems, improve soil health, and enhance biodiversity.
Textile-to-Textile Partnership Award
This award spotlights an impactful collaboration between partners from across the recycling value chain that illustrates how collective action can unlock progress much more effectively than isolated solutions.
The winning alliance will be rooted in a shared commitment to scaling textile-to-textile recycling through innovation and pooled resources, such as by increasing access to recycling infrastructure or strengthening supply chain networks.
Removing Economic Barriers Award
This award recognizes an organization or brand that is successfully addressing the financial barriers that often stand in the way of the transition to, or scaling of, preferred material production systems.
We’re looking for innovative and commercially viable approaches, which may include direct sourcing models, business integration, or building a strong business case that shows preferred production systems can deliver both environmental and economic value.
Meet the 2025 Climate and Nature Impact Awards winners
The awards for 2025 were presented at a dedicated ceremony during the Textile Exchange Conference in Lisbon, Portugal. Each of the winners excelled in their field, demonstrating an impact-focused mindset that is showing the fashion, textile, and apparel industry what climate and nature progress can look like in practice.
Collaboration in Action Award
Winner: Victoria’s Secret and Alabama farm partners
Victoria’s Secret worked directly with cotton-farming families in Alabama to develop one of the first scaled, fully traceable US cotton programs connected directly to named growers. The team used a co-design approach, which reflects a genuine partnership where both the producer and brand share equal responsibilities.
Hear from Sarah Moore, Victoria’s Secret
“Our program started in 2020 with an idea of sourcing cotton differently. We started traveling to farms, meeting with farmers, beginning to understand their worlds. Those early conversations on the farms laid the groundwork to develop our program—a program developed in partnership working with four family farms in Alabama, three women-owned, one black-owned, where we contract directly. So we know exactly who grows our cotton and how it is grown. And farmers get full profit for their fiber, no middleman.
“This is not the easy way of doing business. Doing things differently rarely is. But it’s been worth it.”
Regenerative Land Leadership Award
Winner: James Brodie
South African wool farmer James Brodie has shown a deep commitment to regenerative practices and dedication to supporting other farmers to adopt similar approaches. His efforts have been key to driving change at scale and creating true landscape-level ecosystem impact.
Hear from James
“This recognition reflects the collective effort of so many people working to heal our landscapes and build a thriving future for both nature and humanity. I want to acknowledge my wider team—the older and wiser mentors who guided me, our focused regenerative farmers group who support, challenge and inspire, and my dedicated teams on the ground who bring this work to life every day. This award belongs to all of them too.
“On our farm, regeneration is not just a method, it’s a mindset. Working with nature, we are seeing soil health, biodiversity, water systems and productivity restored, and with them, renewed hope for the future.”
Ryan Young Climate Leader Award
Winner: Pablo Roberto Borrelli, Co-Founder, Ovis 21
Ovis 21 works across Patagonia, regenerating degraded grasslands and protecting biodiversity. It has made significant contributions to educational programs and farmer support services and played a pivotal role in developing a standard for grassland regeneration.
Hear from Pablo, Ovis 21
“I invite you to work together to make regeneration the new rule at a global scale, more than the exception.”
Textile-to-Textile Partnership Award
Winner: Recover and Intradeco
Recover, a global producer of recycled cotton fiber, worked with Intradeco Apparel in this commendable partnership, which represents a standout example of localized textile-to-textile recycling systems, showcasing effective infrastructure development and a strong solutions-driven approach.
Hear from Simran Hindwani, Recover
“By combining Recover’s pioneering recycled cotton fiber technology with Intradeco’s vertically integrated manufacturing platform, we have created a transformative model for textile-to-textile recycling in the Americas. Together, we are building Recover™ Central America, a regional hub in El Salvador that produces high-quality recycled fiber at scale, helping brands meet the growing demand for recycled content while reducing lead times, lowering environmental impact, and strengthening supply chain resilience.
“The partnership brings the best of both worlds: Recover™ contributes decades of recycling expertise, traceability technology, and verified environmental data, while Intradeco adds local leadership, market access, and end-to-end apparel manufacturing capabilities. The result is a transparent, efficient, and scalable supply chain rooted in circularity.”
case studies
Read the stories of the previous award-winners
Solving the ecosystem regeneration puzzle in South Africa
For South African wool farmer James Brodie, a locally adapted understanding of livestock and land management is helping regenerate his farm in the Karoo region. He is building a resilient farming system that honors the landscape’s unique ecology, winning him the Regenerative Land Leadership Award in 2025.
Meeting the Australian wool growers bringing the land back to life
In the harsh, dry landscapes of Western Australia, Di and Ian Haggerty are proving that regeneration is possible even in the most challenging conditions. Their innovative approach to farming is reshaping what’s possible for wool production in Australia and earned them the Ryan Young Climate Leader Award in 2024.
Growing climate-resilient cotton with Materra’s master farmers in Gujarat, India
A core part of Materra’s work focuses on building sustainable partnerships with fashion brands through multi-year regenerative cotton offtake agreements between brands and 5,000+ farmers in India. Binding agreements like these ensure much-needed support and risk-sharing for farmers, winning them the Collaboration in Action Award in 2024.
To nominate yourself or someone else, fill out our form on the link below by June 30, 2026