The Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS) is a leading international certification for textiles made from organic fibers. It establishes comprehensive environmental and social criteria throughout the entire textile supply chain to ensure sustainable production and ethical labor practices.
Key Features of GOTS:
- Environmental Criteria: GOTS mandates that textiles labeled as „organic“ contain at least 95% certified organic fibers, while those labeled „made with organic materials“ must have a minimum of 70% organic fibers. The use of hazardous chemicals, such as toxic heavy metals, formaldehyde, and genetically modified organisms (GMOs), is strictly prohibited. Additionally, environmentally friendly processes, like oxygen-based bleaching instead of chlorine bleaching, are required.
- Social Criteria: The standard enforces compliance with key norms of the International Labour Organization (ILO), including the prohibition of forced and child labor, ensuring safe and hygienic working conditions, and the payment of living wages.
- Traceability: GOTS ensures that all stages of production—from raw material harvesting to final product manufacturing—are certified. This guarantees transparency and allows consumers to trace the origin and processing of textiles.
Challenges and Contradictions in Practice:
While the GOTS label aims to help consumers easily identify products that adhere to strict environmental and social standards, several challenges can lead to contradictory practices:
- Complex Supply Chains: The global nature of textile supply chains can make it difficult to monitor compliance at every stage, potentially resulting in products bearing the GOTS label even if certain production steps do not fully meet the standards.
- Inspection Limitations: Although GOTS requires regular on-site inspections, factors such as resource constraints or logistical challenges can lead to insufficient oversight, allowing non-compliant practices to go unnoticed.
- Misuse of Certification: Some companies may engage in „greenwashing“ by using the GOTS label as a marketing tool without fully committing to its principles, leading to a disparity between the claimed and actual adherence to the standards.
To address these issues, it is crucial for certification bodies and companies to enhance transparency and integrity within supply chains. Consumers are encouraged to critically assess certifications and seek additional information to make informed purchasing decisions.
Source:
Muminov, Najmiddin Shamsiddinovich, Zarina Muzaffar qizi Alimova, Moxidil Shuxrat qizi Haqnazarova, and Xayrulla Ulug’bekovich Vasiev. „Quality Analysis and Certification of Textile Products by GOTS—Global Organic Textile Standard.“ Middle European Scientific Bulletin 18 (November 2021). https://cejsr.academicjournal.io/index.php/journal/article/view/892.
Certification Process:
The GOTS certification process involves several steps:
- Application: Companies seeking certification must familiarize themselves with the GOTS standard and submit an application to an approved certification body.
- On-Site Inspection: An accredited third-party certification body conducts on-site inspections to assess compliance with GOTS criteria. This includes evaluating processing facilities, reviewing documentation, and ensuring that environmental and social standards are met.
- Certification: If the inspection is successful, the certification body issues a Scope Certificate, confirming that the company complies with GOTS standards.
- Labelling: Certified products can be labeled with the GOTS logo, providing consumers with assurance of the product’s organic status and adherence to environmental and social criteria.
Source: Global Standard gGmbH. „Home – GOTS – Global Organic Textile Standard.“ Accessed December 12, 2024. https://global-standard.org/
The Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS) explicitly prohibits the use of raw fibers from production sites that engage in mulesing, a practice involving the removal of wool-bearing strips of skin from the breech area of sheep to prevent flystrike. This prohibition reflects GOTS’s commitment to upholding stringent animal welfare principles within the textile supply chain.
GOTS defines mulesing as „the removal of wool-bearing strips of skin from the breech area of sheep intended to avoid problems of fly strike. This includes any type of breech modification, including freeze branding.“
By enforcing this ban, GOTS ensures that certified textiles are produced in accordance with ethical and sustainable practices, aligning with its overarching mission to promote responsible textile production.
Source: Global Standard gGmbH. „GLOBAL ORGANIC TEXTILE STANDARD (GOTS) VERSION 7.0“ Accessed December 12, 2024. https://global-standard.org/images/resource-library/documents/standard-and-manual/GOTS_7.0__DE_signed.pdf?utm_source=chatgpt.com
Concerns Regarding GOTS Certification in Australia:
Despite GOTS’s clear stance against mulesing, concerns have been raised about the trustworthiness of GOTS certification, particularly in Australia. Australia remains one of the few countries where mulesing is still practiced extensively, with reports indicating that less than 20% of Australian wool sold at auction is mulesing-free.
The persistence of mulesing in Australia poses challenges for certification bodies like GOTS. Ensuring that certified wool is genuinely mulesing-free requires rigorous supply chain monitoring and verification. However, the complexity of global textile supply chains can make it difficult to guarantee compliance at every stage, leading to potential instances where mulesed wool is inadvertently certified.
All in all the GOTS Certificate is a general and worldwide known certificate used a lot to identify organic cotton but also wool and other fibers. As with all certificates the question of how can companies get this and who is surveilling the process and later also the execution? There is a lot of opinions on this topic online – GOTS itself and a lot of other sources state you can trust this specific certificate. But through this research I also gathered the information that over all for GOTS and other textile certificates the environment and social aspect are main focuses instead of animal welfare. For that PETA (a non profit animal welfare organisation) has their own certificate PETA approved vegan which also states that in this fibers are non animal recources used. So it is still not easy to navigate the way through these certificates.
