Textile Exchange Project Plan for the Unified Standard Development

Recently, Textile Exchange released a unified standard development project plan, and the editor has compiled relevant content for everyone. Let's take a look together.

About Textile Exchange

Textile Exchange is a global non-profit organization that promotes climate and natural benefits in the fashion, textile, and clothing industries from the source of the supply chain. Its goal is to help the industry reduce greenhouse gas emissions from fiber and raw material production by 45% by 2030.

To achieve this goal, Textile Exchange will maintain integrity and interconnectivity, accelerate the adoption of practices to improve soil health, water, and biodiversity, while respecting human livelihoods and animal welfare.

This unified standard aims to meaningfully embed these objectives into the production of all raw materials within the scope of certification, and promote simplified communication at the consumer level through more integrated and consistent declarations and labels.

Key points of unified standard development

Mixed methods

To ensure the expected results are achieved, Textile Exchange is shifting towards a hybrid approach that combines traditional, practice based requirements with metrics to measure progress towards beneficial outcomes.

Human rights and livelihoods

Textile Exchange is designing a new approach to evaluate the areas that have the most impact on people and communities, with a focus on commitment, due diligence, and appropriate actions based on scale and risk.

Animal welfare

Textile Exchange is reviewing and testing best practices for animal therapy, as well as how their role in agricultural systems can bring beneficial results.

Supply Chain Best Practices

The goal of Textile Exchange is to drive meaningful changes in the environmental impact of primary treatment facilities, including chemical management, water resources, air quality, and waste reduction.

Strengthen communication

Textile Exchange is working to coordinate systems across the entire range of current material standards, promoting simplified communication at the consumer level through more integrated and consistent declarations and labels.

New raw materials and raw materials

Textile Exchange is exploring opportunities to establish partnerships with peer organizations that provide sustainable development systems, expanding certification to the most influential production areas by recognizing new animal fibers, fiber crops, and forest/plant derived materials such as artificial cellulose fibers and biosynthesis.

What materials are available within the scope

Regeneration: synthetic materials, natural materials, recycled MMCF (Man Made Cellulose Fibres)

Animal fibers and materials: wool, alpaca hair, mohair, down, fur, cashmere

Fiber crops: cotton

Plant/forest derived: MMCF, biosynthesis

What changes have occurred

Materials certified according to unified standards and future recognized standards will be tracked through the supply chain and pre-existing regulatory chain standards CCS.

The unified standards cover the practices and results of the production and initial processing of raw materials (including primary/recycled materials), and are applicable to farms, producers, and primary processing facilities.

CCS continues to provide mechanisms for tracking and processing certified inputs into finished products, while the main areas of impact of unified standards are focused on raw material production (including land use practices for animal husbandry, as well as animal welfare and worker benefits), as well as the first processing stage of extracting raw materials and raw materials (including wool washing, pulp dissolution, chemical/mechanical recycling, down processing, and ginning processes).

Timeline

The pilot version of the unified standard will be released under a new name in mid-2024, and the relevant policies of the final version of the standard will be released in mid-2025 after pilot testing and system updates.

The effective date is planned for the first quarter of 2026, which means that audits and certifications can begin on a voluntary basis, and organizations can request certification bodies to conduct audits of unified standards. During the transition period, this will be optional for organizations that have been certified by current standards that have been replaced by unified standards, including GRS, RCS, RWS, RMS, RAS, and RDS.

In mid-2026, 12 months after the final standard release date, this standard will be mandatory and all applicable audits will be required to comply with the new unified standard.