GRS, GOTS & OEKO-TEX: Certifications to Ask Your Supplier For

GRS, GOTS and OEKO-TEX certify different things: GRS verifies recycled content and responsible production, GOTS covers organic fibre from farm to finished textile, and OEKO-TEX STANDARD 100 tests finished materials for harmful substances. Most brands need a combination, chosen by fibre type and the claims they plan to make.

If you have ever asked a supplier “is this fabric certified?” and received a one-word “yes”, this guide is for you. Our materials team answers certification questions from brands almost every day, and the same confusions come up again and again. Here is the plain-English version we wish every buyer had before their first sourcing call.

Why these three textile certifications dominate sourcing conversations

There are dozens of certification schemes in textiles, but for most consumer brands sourcing lower-impact materials, three names cover the majority of real-world conversations: the Global Recycled Standard (GRS), the Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS) and OEKO-TEX (most often STANDARD 100). They get grouped together so often that buyers assume they are interchangeable. They are not — and treating them as interchangeable is where most sourcing mistakes start.

The simplest way to keep them straight: GRS is about where the fibre came from (recycled content), GOTS is about how the fibre was grown and processed (organic), and OEKO-TEX STANDARD 100 is about what is in the finished material (substance testing). One looks backwards at inputs, one covers the whole processing chain, and one examines the end product.

GRS: Global Recycled Standard

GRS applies to products containing recycled content — recycled polyester (rPET) is the classic case. It verifies the recycled content claim itself, tracks chain of custody from reclaimed input through to the final product, and adds requirements on social and environmental practices and chemical restrictions at certified facilities.

What buyers often miss: GRS certifies a supply chain, not a fibre in isolation. For your finished product to carry a GRS claim, every stage that takes ownership of the material — spinner, mill, dye house, manufacturer — generally needs to be certified, and goods move with transaction certificates. A supplier saying “our yarn is GRS” does not automatically mean your finished bag can carry the claim.

Ask for GRS when you are buying recycled polyester, recycled nylon or other recycled-content materials and you intend to make a recycled-content claim on the product.

GOTS: Global Organic Textile Standard

GOTS covers textiles made from organically grown natural fibres — organic cotton being the most common. It is one of the more demanding schemes because it spans the full chain: certified organic fibre at the farm level, then strict criteria on processing, dyeing, chemical inputs, wastewater and social conditions at every certified stage after that.

GOTS has minimum organic-content thresholds and different label grades depending on the proportion of organic fibre. As with GRS, chain of custody matters: an “organic cotton” claim backed by GOTS requires certification through the chain, with scope and transaction certificates as the paper trail.

Ask for GOTS when you are buying organic cotton or other organic natural fibres and want the organic claim verified beyond the farm gate.

OEKO-TEX STANDARD 100

OEKO-TEX STANDARD 100 is fundamentally different from the other two: it says nothing about where the fibre came from or how it was grown. Instead, it certifies that a finished textile article has been laboratory-tested against a defined list of restricted and regulated substances, with limit values that vary by product class — stricter for items like babywear, less strict for materials without prolonged skin contact.

This makes it complementary rather than competitive. A conventional polyester can hold STANDARD 100. A GRS-certified recycled polyester can hold it too. Many buyers ask for OEKO-TEX as a baseline product-safety check on top of whichever content certification matches the fibre.

Ask for OEKO-TEX STANDARD 100 when product safety and restricted-substance compliance matter — which, for consumer products, is essentially always worth asking about.

Side-by-side comparison

How to actually verify — and the traps to avoid

Knowing the schemes is half the job. The other half is asking questions that separate real certification from wishful labelling:

• “Certified” by whom, for what? Ask which entity holds the certificate and whether its scope covers the specific material and process you are buying. A certificate elsewhere in a supplier’s network is not the same as one covering your order.
• Check validity. Certificates expire and scopes change. GOTS and GRS certificates can be checked in public databases; OEKO-TEX offers online label validity checks. Use them.
• Transaction certificates for your goods. For GRS and GOTS claims, the transaction certificate tied to your shipment is the document that actually connects the certification to the material you receive.
• Match the certification to the claim. OEKO-TEX does not support a “recycled” or “organic” claim, and GRS does not demonstrate product-safety testing. Mismatched claims are one of the fastest ways to create problems with retailers and regulators.
• Beware vague language. “Certified fabric”, with no scheme name, certificate number or scope, is a red flag — or at least a prompt to ask better questions.

So which should you ask for?

It depends on fibre and claim. Buying recycled polyester and planning to say so on the hangtag? Ask about GRS. Buying organic cotton? Ask about GOTS. Selling anything that touches skin? Ask about OEKO-TEX STANDARD 100 in addition. Most real sourcing programmes end up with a combination, and a supplier who can explain why a given certification applies to a given material is worth more than one who simply says yes to everything.

At susmaterials we work with the certification systems relevant to each material we supply, and supporting documentation is available on request. You can read more about how we approach this on our certifications page, or go straight to the materials: recycled polyester (rPET), organic cotton, and our leather alternatives range.

Unsure which certifications your product actually needs? Contact us with your product and target market and we will tell you plainly what to ask for — we typically reply quickly. You can also request our Selection Guide by email for a practical overview of our materials and the documentation available for each.

— the susmaterials team