The Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS) has released its GOTS version 7.0. The new certification guidelines feature an expanded scope of environmental and social criteria while aiming to maintain a standard that is practicable for industrial production and appropriate for a wide range of products. GOTS version 7.0 strives to be nothing less than a comprehensive solution for companies to produce organic textiles from, ensuring compliance with environmental and human rights due diligence along the entire supply chain. By providing full traceability from materials, GOTS certification seeks to be an efficient means of verifying genuine sustainability efforts. The new version introduces new requirements for conducting risk-based due diligence on certified companies’ own operations and supply chains, based on the UN guiding principles on business and human rights and the OECD guidelines. The social criteria section has been revised to include a broader human rights-based approach. GOTS 7.0 now also allows recycled organic fibers as additional materials. Important requirements such as the percentage of certified organic fibers, a general ban on toxic and harmful chemicals such as PFAS, restrictions on conventional cotton and pure polyester, and social compliance management have been retained in GOTS version 7.0.
Some of the changes in version 7.0 include:
- New due diligence criteria ensure that certified entities address their actual and potential negative impacts on human rights and the environment
- GOTS environmental criteria, product stewardship and environmental health and safety (EHS) requirements will also apply to the subcontractors of chemical formulators
- Criteria for the incoming organic material have been made stricter
- GOTS 7.0 reduces the permissible quantity of recycled polymer fibers in its certified products, taking into account the disadvantages associated with recycled synthetics, such as microplastic shedding and poor quality.
- In the pursuit of circularity, GOTS will allow the use of recycled GOTS goods waste as an additional fiber in its certified products.
- GOTS human rights and social criteria will now require certified entities to respect internationally recognized human rights protocols, f.e. the International Bill of Human Rights.
- Criteria concerning discrimination, violence and harassment were revised and include the International Labour Organisation (ILO) violence and harassment convention (C190).
- Certified entities are now required to develop a plan to cover the living wage gap.
- GOTS occupational health and safety criteria were revised to consider best international practices and recommendations from the ILO.
International stakeholders with expertise in organic production, textile processing, textile chemistry, human rights and social criteria, as well as representatives from industry, NGOs and civil society organizations, contributed to the new Version 7.0. with over 600 inputs received. Final decisions were made by the multistakeholder GOTS standard revision committee. Standard version 7.0 can be downloaded on the GOTS website and will be fully effective as of 1 March 2024.
With version 3.0 of the ZDHC Manufacturing Restricted Substances List published in November 2022, the Higg Index is updated, and the new GOTS standard 7.0 launched just now, the textile industry has been provided with a new information and regulatory base to rely on in expectation of the EU Green Deal regulations on the horizon. This is even more significant as the European Commission has recently decided to postpone the revision of the regulation for evaluating and authorizing chemicals (REACH) to Q4 2023.
