Apparel brands and retailers will welcome a move by the International Working Group on the Global Organic Textile Standard (IWG) and the Textile Exchange to develop new harmonised policies for transaction and scope certificates to help simplify transparency in the organic textile supply chain.
It is hoped that the harmonisation of certification documents will help users – such as buyers – to more easily compare and verify information provided with scope and transaction certificates issued to GOTS and any Textile Exchange standard.
The new templates will have a unified layout, format and text for both certificate types used by the different certifiers and standards. They will need to be used by the GOTS / TE-approved certifiers for any scope and transaction certificates issued after 1 September 2012.
Brands and retailers who purchase certified goods from various suppliers, issued by different certifiers and to different standards, are expected to welcome this move to simplify textile certification.
A Scope Certificate shows that a specific facility has been certified as able to produce according to a specific standard, while a Transaction Certificate illustrates that a specific product, or shipment of products, was producedaccording to a specific standard.
The harmonised templates along with policies for their issuing can be found on the GOTS website