Credible Sustainability Claims: There Is a Need to Standardise How We Measure Impact

The other thing that's just as recent is the EU Green Claims Directive. How do you think the Cradle to Cradle concept itself blends with the scheme of things? Do you think you need to refine your standard on any count? The Directive wants to crack down on greenwashing. What's your stand on the subject? What are you doing to discourage, as well as crack down on, greenwashing?
Nienke Steen: Helping consumers to gain information about sustainability labels on textile products is critical to increase awareness and educate the public on important matters such as the sustainable practices adopted by companies in the making of a product. Independent third-party verification through certifications like Cradle to Cradle Certified play a fundamental role in giving credibility and verifying sustainability claims that consumers can rely upon.

The adoption of the Directive on Green Claims by the European Commission is an important step to counter greenwashing on a large scale. Requiring that sustainability claims by companies are independently verified will ensure that consumers are protected while empowering them to actively contribute to the green transition. By providing third-party verification, the C2C Certified Products Program is already helping hundreds of pioneering companies to take concrete steps in this direction. 

As the world’s most advanced science-based, multi-attribute certification programme, our programme is already fit for purpose to meet the requirements of the Directive, specifically to provide the framework to assess and validate the safety, circularity and responsibility of materials and products across five categories of sustainability performance.

There's more or less a prevalent viewpoint that it's the big companies that go in for standards and certifications both because they think they should as well as the fact that they can afford it. But there are millions of small players, who are either seen as supply chain partners or just Scope 3 emission constituents. How do you react to this?
Nienke Steen: Small and medium enterprises (SME) are essential in the textile sector. They represent a major part of the sector and we can't do without them.  There are many sustainability innovators among them and SME suppliers to the bigger brands and retailers. Big companies have higher budgets and larger scale collections and can more easily afford certifications. 

Certifications like Cradle to Cradle Certified do come with a non-trivial cost because it is backed by deep expertise for detailed assessment and assistance with improvement/optimisation and third party validation. In our programme, you will find big and small companies. We are working on some new tools to lower the cost of data collection for assessments and a number of other efficiency initiatives to bring down the cost.  SMEs are crucial in developing circular products and therefore for the circular textile economy.

The question of audit fatigue is being debated and discussed over the last few years, and there are initiatives that are working towards cutting down that audit overload. What is your Institute doing in this regard? Especially when it comes to making life easier for textile and apparel players?
Nienke Steen: We recognise audit fatigue faced by companies and to help them reduce it,  we have set up a recognition programme where we invite other programmes and standards that cover part of our requirements on our five impact categories to apply for recognition. In that way we can avoid double auditing and verification of impact requirements and reduce  the audit workload for companies in the value chain. For example, we recognise the Global Organic Cotton Standard, Cotton Made in Africa,  the ZDHC MRSL for chemical formulations for textiles, and thereby avoid companies meeting another MRSL.

The other thing that is being hotly debated today is the whole LCA concept. Even a few years ago, every LCA analysis went unquestioned, almost as if it were the gospel truth. Not anymore. How do you look at this? It definitely can't be my LCA is better than yours kind of argument. Where do you find yourselves in this debate?
Nienke Steen: In order to provide  credible sustainability claims that consumers or businesses can rely upon, we need to standardise how we measure impact. Using LCAs is a way of doing that, but it can be challenging to do well and the results may not be clear. By using LCAs you can easily compare apples to pears, because the assessments could entail different processing steps and data from non-representative value chains. So we need to define clearly what is being measured and how to make the measurement fair and representative.  The EU Product Environmental Footprint Product Category rules are a good approach to create a common standard for LCAs.

While LCA is an important analytical and decision-making tool that uses average, industry data, Cradle to Cradle Certified measures actual data from factories where products are made (e.g., chemicals used in manufacturing, water, energy, emissions), throughout the value chain of the product or product group.   We provide a Product Circularity Data and Cycling Instructions Report with every certified product group to inform businesses, consumers, sorters and cyclers about the materials, chemicals and circular design strategy for the product.