Ensuring Integrity in the Use of Life Cycle Assessment Data is a comprehensive position paper from Textile Exchange outlining best practice for the responsible use of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) data in the fashion, textile, and apparel industry.

The paper provides guidance on how to use LCA data, and—equally importantly—how it should not be used. It is intended for anyone looking to develop a greater understanding of the use of LCA studies and LCA data in the textile industry—particularly for brands using LCA data directly or those who rely on it for their impact modeling or progress tracking.

Ensuring Integrity in the Use of Life Cycle Assessment Data forms part of Textile Exchange’s commitment to convening actors across the supply chain to improve the impact data available for the industry. It includes a call for industry-wide integrity in the use of LCA data, listing key recommendations.

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Ensuring Integrity in the Use of Life Cycle Assessment Data includes a call for industry-wide integrity in the use of LCA data, with key recommendations, such as only using LCA data when there is a full understanding of the key assumptions, methods, and use cases.

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TAKEAWAYS

Discover some of the key recommendations

• Only use LCA data when there is a clear understanding of the underlying assumptions, methodologies, and intended use. To help, all assumptions, methodological choices, limitations, and source datasets should be fully documented in studies.

• Avoid comparing LCA data between different fiber or material categories (e.g., natural vs. synthetic).

• Avoid comparing LCA data between separate LCA studies or within a study, unless it is designed as a comparative LCA study.

• Avoid comparing LCA data between different industry databases, which collect and store LCA data, as each of these databases applies differing methodologies and assumptions.

• Consider adopting an “LCA+” approach that includes impact areas such as biodiversity, soil health, animal welfare, and livelihoods.

EXPLORE

In the paper you’ll also find

• An introduction to Life Cycle Assessment, including a definition of what it is, why it’s used, and the steps to follow to conduct an LCA study.

• The challenges and limitations of using LCA in the textile industry.

• Textile Exchange’s work with LCA studies.

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A Guide to Credible Regenerative Agriculture Claims is designed to help brands, producers, and other stakeholders make effective and credible claims about their work supporting regenerative agriculture. 

Regenerative agriculture is place-based and context-specific, which means it doesn’t have a single “one-size-fits-all’ definition. This can make it challenging to communicate claims accurately and effectively and as such there is rising concern that the promise of regenerative is being diluted.  

To help address this and to protect and elevate the work of those that are committed to regenerative outcomes, Textile Exchange has created A Guide to Credible Regenerative Agriculture Claims. It help brands overcome such challenges and sets out the key principles to follow to make claims clear, accurate, and relevant, and supported by transparent and robust systems. 

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A Guide to Credible Regenerative Agriculture Claims includes sections on the different types of regenerative agriculture claims, how they should be managed and reported, and how to avoid issues such as greenwashing and greenhushing.  

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Why the guidance is needed

In recent years, interest in regenerative agriculture has grown among brands and customers, driven by increasing awareness of the impact the fashion, textile, and apparel industry has on the environment. Making credible, verifiable claims not only builds customer trust but also enhances brand value, promotes the beneficial impact regenerative agriculture can have, and helps drive the meaningful change we need to see across the industry. 

By following this guide, which aligns with best practices such as the ISEAL Credibility Principles and UN Principles for Sustainable Fashion Communication, brands can avoid reputational risks, enhance customer confidence, and help increase awareness of effective regenerative systems.  

What’s included in the guide

The guide has been created primarily for brands, while also addressing the needs of producers and other stakeholders. It has been designed to be easy to use, with clearly defined sections including: 

• Six takeaways for brands to follow when creating credible claims 

• The key challenges brands face when making claims 

• The different types of regenerative agriculture claims 

• How to effectively make, manage, and report on credible claims 

• The role of companies in supporting regenerative outcomes 

Textile Exchange’s regenerative agriculture tools 

The guide is the latest in a series of regenerative agriculture tools and resources from Textile Exchange, sitting alongside the Regenerative Agriculture Landscape Analysis and the Regenerative Agriculture Outcome Framework. They are designed to work together — helping brands understand regenerative agriculture, implement it in supply chains, measure outcomes, and communicate efforts credibly. 

Please note: The guide is not intended to be legal advice, but rather has been created in good faith as a service to the industry to help brands and others navigate what is needed to support crafting credible regenerative agriculture claims.

Learn more about Regenerative Agriculture Outcome Framework

Regenerative Agriculture Outcome Framework

April 2, 2025

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Our Guidance on Science-Based Targets for Nature publication is designed to help brands and retailers go beyond greenhouse gas emissions and establish more holistic impact goals.

The textile industry’s reliance on both fossil and land-based raw materials directly impacts natural ecosystems. Alongside the overwhelmingly negative impacts of virgin fossil-based synthetics, common land-based materials can either disrupt or restore nature, depending on how they are managed.

It is a key opportunity for the industry, with fibers and materials including cotton and leather now listed on the Science Based Targets Network’s (SBTN) list of High-Impact Commodities — which considers their potential worst-case scenario pressures on areas like climate, land, water, and soil. In contrast, these can all form part of regenerative systems that restore nature and biodiversity, giving the industry significant leverage on its impact just by changing how its materials are produced.

The formal introduction of science-based targets for nature by the SBTN in 2024 gave brands a common methodology to address these areas. However, setting effective nature targets requires granular, location-specific data and heightened supply chain visibility, resulting in complex processes that demand industry-specific guidance and support.

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Our Guidance on Science-Based Targets for Nature helps translate the SBTN methods, supporting the uptake of nature-related targets. The publication is designed to help brands and retailers implement primarily Step 3 of the science-based targets for nature framework as it relates to raw material production.

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Next steps for the industry

Successfully setting and delivering on science-based targets for nature will involve rethinking the entire supply system. This is by no means an easy task and requires stakeholders to support and align across all tiers and levels.

Textile Exchange’s Guidance on Science-Based Targets for Nature provides users with practical steps and general considerations to get started, along with specific tips to navigate the two most relevant target-setting areas for the industry: freshwater and land. Broadly, it recommends that companies consider the following six key areas:

• Reducing resource use and overall environmental impact 
• Exploring regenerative agriculture in material production
• Implementing responsible land management practices
• Adopting circular economy solutions and recycling 
• Reducing pollution and chemical use 
• Supporting Indigenous and local communities

These steps can help the industry address its ecological footprint, contribute to biodiversity conservation, and support the regeneration of natural systems. These factors are all important within Textile Exchange’s longstanding Climate+ strategy, which states that nature-related impact areas such as biodiversity, freshwater, and soil health should always be considered alongside greenhouse gas emissions reduction.

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The Reimagining Growth Landscape Analysis is a comprehensive report examining the prevailing linear “take-make-waste” business model of the fashion, apparel, and textile industry, aiming to drive a shift away from unchecked resource consumption.

The report highlights that the industry’s current trajectory is incompatible with achieving key climate, nature, and human rights goals, with impacts only increasing while growth remains a business imperative. It calls on existing scientific and academic literature to provide a set of pathways to reimagine value creation beyond exponential increases in the extraction and production of new raw materials to create new products.

Detailed in the Reimagining Growth Landscape Analysis is the case for pivoting business success in the industry from the traditional interpretation of growth to a model aligned with “regenerative economy” and “post-growth” principles. This will be necessary not only to bring it back in line with the planet’s limits, but to ensure its own resilience, mitigating future risk associated with supply chain instability, resource depletion, overreliance on finite resources, and incoming legislation.

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Beyond outlining the risks of business-as-usual, the Reimagining Growth Landscape Analysis looks at the potential pathways for value creation through an approach that respects both environmental and social imperatives, contributing to a better future for all.

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Discover the key takeaways

• Reimagining growth looks different for every material. For virgin fossil-based synthetics, Textile Exchange advocates for phasing them out as quickly as possible. For natural materials, it’s about ensuring the availability of sustainably sourced renewable materials — like regenerative and organic options — while limiting growth to protect the conversion of pristine ecosystems.

• Growth as it has been traditionally defined — whether in terms of sales, production, or market share — is deeply ingrained in overarching financial systems and corporate culture. In most cases, pressure to prioritize growth outweighs sustainability goals, particularly when facing investors and shareholders who are accustomed to short-term financial returns.
   
• A significant challenge associated with elevating this topic to business leaders is terminology. An industry survey conducted as part of the research for this report indicated a lack of alignment on a single term that accurately and clearly articulates the concepts for all stakeholders. However, the report emphasizes that this should not hinder progress.
   
• Pathways for change at the raw material level include eliminating the use of virgin fossil-based synthetic materials and championing sustainably sourced renewable and closed-loop, textile-to-textile recycled feedstocks. Designing durable, high-quality products and scaling circular business models, such as repair, rental, resale, and responsible take-back initiatives, will also be key, as well as eliminating marketing practices that drive overconsumption and supporting consumer awareness, education, and engagement instead.
   
• These pathways require systemic support, advocating for ambitious government policy and collective corporate commitment to accelerate the transition to a post-growth model. Ensuring a just transition — protecting the rights, livelihoods, and well-being of people across the value chain — is also essential, making space for contributions from all stakeholder groups so as to leave no one behind.
   
• The shift that needs to occur for transformational change is at the market level, rather than just at the individual business level, and it cannot be achieved by a single brand or the textile industry alone. Businesses should explore the role they can play in helping to drive this shift, sharing best practices and learnings to support others to follow suit.

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The emission pathways assessed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to limit global warming to 1.5°C or 2°C by the year 2100 require not only the reduction of emissions but also the utilization of carbon dioxide removals (CDR).

Many companies have set their emission targets in line with 1.5°C, aiming to achieve net zero eventually. This has led to an increased awareness of GHG emissions in the supply chain (scope 3 emissions), where agricultural products can represent important hotspots, especially where deforestation occurs. At the same time, there is hope that agriculture can be part of the solution, such as through soil carbon sequestration supported by improved agricultural practices.

One key point in this matter is biogenic carbon. This type of carbon is absorbed from the atmosphere by plants as they grow and can be released back into the atmosphere later when the plants burn or break down.

There is no doubt that biogenic carbon stocks are important for emissions and mitigating carbon levels. However, the extent of changes in these biogenic carbon stocks and the methods to quantify these changes have been highly controversial and a subject of debate for many years.

This paper, written in collaboration with Sphera, provides guidance on the difficult terrain of old and new standards and guidelines that cover accounting methods for biogenic carbon, including:

• GHG Protocol (2023): Land Sector and Removals Guidance Draft
• Product Environmental Footprint method of then European Commission
• ISO (2018): ISO 14067:2018 – Carbon footprint of products
• WWF/SBTi (2023): Forest, Land and Agriculture Science-Based Target-Setting Guidance V1.1

Download the paper

Biogenic Carbon: Guideline on the Consideration of Biogenic Carbon Emissions and Removals in Carbon Footprint Calculations is freely available to all.

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Discover the key takeaways

• Removals should only be considered in carbon footprint calculations if it can be ensured that they are permanent. The guidance on the inclusion of removals for reporting requirements in the GHG Protocol Land Sector and Removals Guidance is particularly relevant here.
  
  
• In most cases, the storage of carbon in biobased products (carbon contained in the product) will be temporary. The carbon stored in the product should not be claimed as being removed if it cannot be considered to be removed permanently (under the strict criteria laid out in the GHG Protocol).
  
  
• Carbon emissions from land-use change contribute significantly to global warming. Avoiding emissions from land-use change should be a top priority for all companies, which requires them to better understand the origin of their supply chains and improve the traceability of their materials.
  
  
• Removals should only be claimed if occurring directly in the value chain and if strict criteria to claim removals from GHG Protocol are met. Offsetting cannot be included in a carbon footprint.
  
  
• The uncertainty around removals with soil carbon sequestration remains high. In some circumstances, significant soil organic carbon sequestration is possible. However, due to the associated uncertainty within quantification methods, soil organic carbon sequestration should only be one part of a broader emission reduction strategy.
  
  
• Even without carbon sequestration claims, promoting healthy soil environments is worthwhile. If removals are being claimed, the principles of permeance should be established. More importantly, it remains to be seen how the sequestration of carbon in soils and its quantification can be put into practice in a scalable way.
  
  
• Delayed emissions should not be included in carbon footprint assessments. If assessed, they should be reported as additional information.

The post Biogenic Carbon Guideline appeared first on Textile Exchange.

Discover some of the key insights and trends from Textile Exchange’s Materials Benchmark.

The Materials Benchmark is the largest peer-to-peer comparison initiative in the fashion, textile, and apparel industry. Every year, it tracks the uptake of fibers and raw materials from recognized programs, as well as how companies are addressing areas like circularity, biodiversity, land, freshwater, and forests.

To explore aggregated data and trends from participating brands and retailers, we have compiled a factsheet that provides key insights into the state of the sector.

The Materials Benchmark is open to all companies that want to measure and report their fiber and raw material-related progress. However, it is important to note that the data in this factsheet refer to companies that report into the Materials Benchmark only, which far outperform the industry as a whole in terms of their sustainability progress.

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Explore all of the insights

Dive deeper into how companies that reported into the 2024 Materials Benchmark cycle are addressing climate and nature through their raw material sourcing.

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Discover the key takeaways

• The number of reporting brands and retailers (including subsidiaries) increased from 57 in 2015 to a record 418 in 2024.

• The share of raw materials under sustainability programs used by the reporting brands increased from 53% in 2022 to 57% in 2023.
  
  
• The share of recycled materials from textile-to-textile feedstocks remains very low. Less than 1% of all fibers used by the brands and retailers were from textile-to-textile feedstocks from post-consumer textiles in 2023.
   
• The total fiber and raw material usage as shared by the reporting brands decreased from around 2.3 million tonnes in 2022 to 2.1 million tonnes in 2023. The use of virgin fossil-based synthetic fibers also decreased among reporting brands.
   
• Brands and retailers still struggle to identify the country of origin of their raw materials. 80% of all cotton sourced by the reporting brands was from an unknown country of origin, and 75% of all polyester.
  
  
• The share of brands with formal climate targets increased from 66% in 2022 to 79% in 2023.
  
  
• The share of brands that implemented measures to reduce impacts on climate and nature during raw materials production increased from 79% in 2022 to 86% in 2023.
  
  

The post Materials Benchmark Insights and Trends 2024 appeared first on Textile Exchange.

Global fiber production reached an all-time high of 124 million tonnes in 2023, according to Textile Exchange’s annual Materials Market Report.

Textile Exchange’s Materials Market Report has been the leading source for global fiber and materials production volumes for the last decade. It helps inform the textile industry’s efforts to reduce emissions associated with raw material production in line with a 1.5-degree temperature rise pathway.

The latest report, which looks at total fiber volumes used for apparel, home textiles, footwear, or any other application, shows that global fiber production increased 7% from 116 million tonnes in 2022 to 124 million tonnes in 2023. This number is expected to rise to 160 million tonnes in 2030 if current trends continue.

Similarly, the market share of virgin fossil-based synthetics continued to increase in 2023, while that of cotton and recycled fibers slightly declined. These findings highlight a continued reliance on new virgin fossil-based synthetic materials, threatening to undermine the industry’s commitments to its climate goals. It also shows the current limitations of textile-to-textile recycling and an urgent need for innovative solutions, with most recycled polyester still coming from PET bottles.

Amid these concerns, one positive trend that stands out is the increased industry demand for responsible animal fibers through programs like the Responsible Mohair Standard (RMS) and Responsible Alpaca Standard (RAS), both contributing to better animal welfare and environmental management. This indicates the potential of farm-level standards of this kind to increase market recognition of more sustainable practices on the ground.

For many years, Textile Exchange reported on the total fiber and raw materials market, including programs for various levels of “preferred” fibers, as well as the conventional business as-usual. To better reflect this, in 2023, we decided to update the report’s name from the “Preferred Fiber & Materials Market Report” to the “Materials Market Report.”

“The Materials Market Report 2024 was revised in January 2025. Please see the report methodology for further information.”

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Our Materials Market Report is freely available to all.

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Discover the key takeaways

• Synthetics continue to dominate: The production of virgin fossil-based synthetic fibers increased from 67 million tonnes in 2022 to 75 million tonnes in 2023. Polyester remained the most produced fiber globally, accounting for 57% of total fiber production. 

• Recycled synthetics face challenges: Although recycled polyester fiber production slightly increased in 2023, the overall market share of recycled polyester decreased from 13.6% to 12.5%. For polyamide (nylon), the second most used synthetic fiber, recycled fibers constituted only 2% of the total market share. These trends are attributed to the lower prices and continued production of virgin synthetics, as well as current limitations in recycling technologies. Less than 1% of the global fiber market came from pre- and post-consumer recycled textiles.
   
• Cotton production saw a slight decline: Total global cotton volumes fell slightly from 25.1 million tonnes in 2022 to 24.4 million tonnes in 2023. However, the share of cotton produced under sustainability programs remained stable, accounting for 28% of all cotton produced. 
   
• Certified wool climbs: Data showed positive trends for wool produced under standards such as the Responsible Wool Standard (RWS), ZQ, SustainaWOOL (GREEN and GOLD), Sustainable Cape Wool Standard (SCWS) and Climate Beneficial programs. This increased from 4.2% in 2022 to 4.8% in 2023. Recycled wool continued to account for around 6% of the global wool market.  
   
• Certified mohair and cashmere reached almost half of market share: Certified fibers such as mohair and cashmere saw notable growth, both with market shares of 47%. 
   
• Manmade cellulosic fibers production increased: Overall MMCF production increased from 7.4 million tonnes in 2022 to 7.9 million tonnes in 2023, representing 6% of the global fiber market.

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