Coverage
No two of these measure the same thing.
A mark certifying chemical safety says nothing about carbon. A mark certifying recycled content says nothing about labor. Citing one as evidence for the other is how a defensible claim becomes an indefensible one.
| Fiber content | Chemical inputs | Social criteria | Chain of custody | Circularity | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GOTS | assessed | assessed | assessed | assessed | not assessed |
| OEKO-TEX 100 | not assessed | assessed | not assessed | not assessed | not assessed |
| GRS | assessed | assessed | assessed | assessed | assessed |
| RCS | assessed | not assessed | not assessed | assessed | assessed |
| FSC | not assessed | not assessed | not assessed | assessed | partial |
| bluesign | not assessed | assessed | not assessed | partial | not assessed |
| Cradle to Cradle | not assessed | assessed | assessed | not assessed | assessed |
What each column asks
- Fiber content
- Whether the scheme verifies what the material actually is and in what proportion — organic, recycled, or a stated blend. A mark silent here cannot support a content claim.
- Chemical inputs
- Whether dyes, auxiliaries and finishes are assessed against a restricted substances list. This is what most consumers assume every green mark covers. Most do not.
- Social criteria
- Whether labor conditions at the certified facilities are within scope. Assessed is not the same as audited to a labor standard; the scheme’s own text says which.
- Chain of custody
- Whether the material is tracked across processing stages, so that the certified input in the field is the certified content in the finished product.
- Circularity
- Whether end-of-life, recyclability or material recovery is assessed at all. The newest dimension, and the one where the marks diverge most.
How to read it
A blank cell is a finding, not a missing entry
Where a body states in its own documentation that it does not cover a dimension, that is recorded on their authority and shown as not assessed. It is not a criticism of the scheme — a chain-of-custody standard is not supposed to assess chemistry — and it is not an absence of research. It is the scheme telling you the limit of what its mark can support.
Partial means the scheme touches the dimension without assessing it in full, and the page for that standard says in what respect. Nothing in this table is scored, weighted or totalled, because a total would imply the five columns are worth the same, and which one matters depends entirely on the claim you are trying to make.