About
A reference you can hand to a lawyer without checking it first.
Eco Worldwide publishes what certification schemes actually require, what environmental-claims law actually tests, and what the evidence for a material actually says — traced to the body that published it.
Mission
Eco Worldwide covers eco-friendly materials, sustainable products and green innovation worldwide — and checks every claim made about them against the document that decides it.
Worldwide, because the rule is not the same twice
A claim that is lawful in Dallas is a prohibited practice in Dublin. A certificate that satisfies a buyer in Hamburg says nothing to a regulator in London. Scope follows the market you are selling into, which is why the reference is organized by jurisdiction as well as by material.
Where the coverage is thin, the page says so
The materials and certification sections are the furthest along. Sustainable products and green innovation are stated scope rather than finished shelves, and the reference index shows exactly what exists today. A mission describes what a publication is for; it is not a claim about how much of it is already written.
Why it exists
Most of what is written about sustainable materials is written by someone with something to sell, and repeated by someone who did not check. A claim enters trade press, gets restated, and eight repetitions later it is a fact with no source at the bottom of it. Meanwhile the rules that decide whether you may print that claim on a package — 16 CFR Part 260 in the United States, Directive (EU) 2024/825 and the Green Claims Directive in Europe — contain specific, numeric tests that almost nobody quotes accurately.
This site does one narrow thing: it reads the primary document and writes down what it says, with the citation attached, so that the next person does not have to.
Method
How a page gets written
- Start at the body that issues the rule. A figure about GOTS comes from GOTS. A figure about the Green Guides comes from 16 CFR Part 260. Trade-press restatements are used to find a source, never as one.
- Record the version and the date. Standards are revised. Every page carries the version of the document it was read against and the date it was last checked, because a correct figure from the superseded version is still wrong.
- Leave gaps visible. Where the published material does not answer a question, the page says so and lists the question. An estimate dressed as a finding is the failure mode this site exists to avoid.
- Describe scope, do not rank. GRS, OCS, GOTS and the Materials Matter Standard measure different things. Saying one is best requires a purpose the reader has and we do not.
The full rules, including how corrections are logged, are on the editorial and corrections policy.
Boundaries
What this is not
- Not a certifier
- Eco Worldwide certifies nothing and issues no marks. Where a certificate matters, the page sends you to the issuing body’s own register.
- Not a rating agency
- No company is scored. Scores compress judgements that belong to the reader.
- Not for sale in the text
- No mention, listing or favorable reading can be bought. A labelled sponsorship block can be — it sits beside the page, never in it, and the terms are on the sponsorship page.
- No ad network
- No auction, no retargeting, no third-party advertising script, and no affiliate commissions. Everything commercial here is sold directly and labelled where it appears.
How it is paid for
Reference free, review paid
Everything in the reference section is free to read and free to quote with attribution. The site is funded by paid work of a different kind: reviewing a company’s own claims against its own certificates, and sequencing the transition to the Materials Matter Standard before the 2027 and 2029 deadlines.
That work is deliberately kept on the other side of a wall. Buying a review buys you an opinion about your own claims. It does not buy a mention, a listing, or a kinder reading anywhere on this site.
Standards and regulations are revised. Check the verification date on a page before relying on a figure, and read the source document before you act on it. Nothing on this site is legal advice, and no reading here substitutes for counsel in your own jurisdiction.