WAKEFIELD – We’ve just published the eighth edition of our Textile Standards & Legislation booklet which is designed to give readers a snapshot of the most important voluntary and obligatory environmental and social standards, tools and labels in the textile industry.

First published back in 2009, the idea behind this printed guide book is not only to provide readers with an easy reference to the new and seemingly ever-growing number of environmental labels – we now cover 75 in this edition – but also to update you on changes to existing label criteria which are often revised ‘under the radar’.

The snapshots we publish in our 100-page booklet are also updated in real-time on our website at www.textilestandards.com where readers can find much more detailed information on each standard than we can include in print, and where we also provide links to key supporting documentation for each standard or tool.

This edition’s new additions include the brand new ‘Responsible’ certification, launched in fall 2022, that aims to meet supply chain due diligence requirements. We’ve also included the new Delta Framework, a common set of environmental, social and economic indicators that hopes to standardise progress amongst farmer networks in the cotton sector.

Meanwhile, the new Regenagri Standard takes a holistic look at farming, considering the different management strategies and practices used to assess a farm's regenerative environmental impact.

Order your copy and get access here.

For the first time, we’ve also included snapshots on a couple of tools that we think will be particularly useful. The first measures the impact of company operations on biodiversity, which can be extremely difficult to assign a value. The online Biodiversity Guidance Tool was developed by the Capitals Coalition and UNEP-WCMC to steer practitioners through a series of interactive questions to undertake a biodiversity-inclusive natural capital assessment.

The second new tool is the Open Apparel Registry, which was growing in importance, but will shortly be replaced by the Open Supply Hub (OSH). This open-source effort maps the whereabouts and performances of garment manufacturing facilities around the world and in 2022 expanded its remit to other sectors. Other new entries include the new YESS standards from the responsible sourcing network, the Responsible Alpaca Standard from Textile Exchange) and the EU-Product Environmental Footprint, which may eventually end up making some of the standards we mention in the guide obsolete.

You can order a copy of the printed guide book and get full access to our updated website at the MCL News & Media website.