Textile Exchange Debuts ‘Materials Matter’ Standards
At its annual conference held this October in Pasadena, Calif., Textile Exchange formally debuted its Materials Matter Standard, which connects environmental and climate impacts with upstream supply chain activities.
Introduced by Textile Exchange CEO Claire Bergkamp during closing remarks on Tuesday, the newly released framework represents the culmination of three years of revisions to the group’s existing standards, with a fresh focus on holistically assessing responsible practices related to climate, land use, human rights and animal welfare.
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“The standard represents our commitment as an organization to clarity, to impact and to collaboration in alignment with new legislation and trying to create a clear path for impact driven, holistic raw material targeting,” she said. “But for us, this goes way beyond compliance. It’s about building a framework that supports brands, retailers and producers to create real metrical change on the ground.”
“The Materials Matter standard is not just our standard—it’s a shared effort built on the insights and contributions from all of you. From our international working group to public consultations, the commitment for collaboration of all the interested and impacted stakeholders helped us to create powerful criteria that we feel very confident in.”
The system builds upon the group’s current standards for animal fiber production, establishing a set of desired regenerative outcomes and allowing producers to demonstrate compliance within the unique circumstances of their farm operations. The standards take into account soil health, biodiversity, and “overall ecological resilience,” with the goal of advancing the Textile Exchange mission to help the industry slash its Scope 3 emissions by 45 percent by 2030.
The framework also serves to connect certified raw materials to Textile Exchange’s Content Claim Standard, a global chain of custody, as well as its Trackit traceability program, which features tools for verification and tracking certified materials. Together, the systems will help ensure claims are transparent, substantiated and centralized, the group said.
The Materials Matter Standard is a departure from the previous Textile Exchange framework in that it creates an umbrella standard for multiple materials, which the group said should streamline processes and help avoid duplication of efforts. It will boost efficiency in the certification process while taking into account “the unique attributes of each material’s journey.”
Setting clear criteria and providing methods for measuring outcomes will allow the industry to measure its progress on a shared trajectory toward science-based climate and environmental targets, the group added. Perhaps most pressing, the standard’s focus on transparency is designed to align with increasing regulatory demands for due diligence and climate impact reporting. And, a new certification logo aims to enhance consumer awareness about brand compliance and progress.
According to Bergkamp, Textile Exchange has tested a pilot version of the Materials Matter standard throughout 2024 with producers and processers across the globe. Learnings from this trial period will be taken into account as the group finalizes the standard, which will be published in mid-2025.
“This for us is a huge shift in the way that we think about standards,” Bergkamp said Tuesday. “What we’ve done with the Materials Matter standard is make it so that we can really think about outcomes, not only practices. What we’ve built is vetted, embedded in legitimate principles, and we’re very excited about what it can mean for the future of standards.”
The executive said the augmented framework will also give the non-profit the opportunity to be more “place-based in our thinking, and really respond to conditions on the ground,” taking into account the diverse conditions and circumstances of upstream players in the apparel and textile supply chain.
“From a brand perspective, we have to recognize where our impacts are on the planet,” said Sean Cady, vice president of sustainability, responsibility, trade and government affairs for VF Corp. A whopping 99 percent of those outputs are from Scope 3 activities, “and of that, the vast majority of our environmental impact occurs deep up the supply chain at the raw material extraction and the raw material processing stage.”
Cady said the certification and verification landscape has gotten crowded, and the actual credibility of some systems is dubious. “And so the unified standard will allow us to send a simplified demand signal throughout our supply chain, be very clear on our requirements, and importantly, reduce the friction that we all face today in sourcing increasing levels and increasing amounts of sustainable raw materials.”
Farm manager Tony Overton of New South Wales, Australia-based sheep farm Europambela Grazing Co. echoed the thinking that unified standards help clearly communicate brand needs to farmers and encourage them to pursue more regenerative practices. The group began transitioning to activities that promote better water quality and biodiversity about 15 years ago, mostly out of a need to cut costs. Using less chemicals and fewer pesticides had the parallel effect of improving the farm’s output and attracting attention from customers.
“Originally it was, ‘We’re there to survive,’ and now, we’ve got enough money to invest into sustainable practices, and as we do more into sustainable practices, that actually makes the income more stable,” he said.
With brands buying into a standardized framework for certification, that demand signal becomes even stronger, he said. “The farmer becomes very accountable that the money is going to where the brands actually want it to go, so they are reinvesting that back into things that are going to be more environmental and fix things that may be broken,” he said.
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