MANUFACTURING

Businesses With Organic Certification Growing

Receiving the gold standard for green is hard, but more businesses are aspiring to the Global Organic Textile Standard, according to the non-profit agency that developed standards for the coveted certification which deems a product organic.

This agency, Global Standard gemeinnützige GmbH, headquartered in Germany, recently announced that the number of GOTS-certified facilities around the world increased 11 percent last year to 3,016, compared with 2,714 GOTS-certified facilities in 2011. There is an increase because the market is demanding more organic product, said Herbert Ladwig, GOTS managing director.

“Increasingly, consumers are demanding ecologically and socially responsibly–processed textiles, and companies are searching for tools to make their supply chains more sustainable. The result is a ‘pull effect’ and more companies becoming GOTS-certified,” Ladwig said.

The United States is ranked 13th in the world for its number of GOTS-certified facilities. Last year, it experienced slight growth. The number of GOTS-certified facilities increased to 44 in 2012 from 40 in the previous year.

Countries with the greatest increase in facilities gaining GOTS certification in 2012 were India, China, South Korea, Germany, Bangladesh and Portugal.