Editorial and corrections

The source hierarchy

Every figure on this site is traced to one of four places, in this order of preference. A lower tier is used only when nothing higher answers the question, and the page says which tier the figure came from.

Tier	What counts
1 — The instrument	The standard, regulation or directive itself: 16 CFR Part 260, Directive (EU) 2024/825, the GOTS or Materials Matter text, at the stated version
2 — The issuing body	The certifier’s or regulator’s own published guidance, public register or decision notice
3 — Primary research	The study itself, with its method and sample size stated — never a press release about it
4 — Stated but unverified	A company’s own claim about itself, labelled as such and never presented as a finding

Trade press, consultancy summaries and secondary coverage are used for one purpose only: to find out that a primary source exists. They are never cited as the source, however often a figure has been repeated.

What the verification date means

Each page carries the date the material on it was last read against its source, and the version of the document it was read against. That is a stronger commitment than a publication date and a weaker one than a guarantee: it means that on that date, a person opened the source document and confirmed the figure was still there and still said this.

It does not mean the source has been checked since. Standards are revised on their own timetable. Before you rely on a number commercially, open the linked source — which is why it is linked.

Recording what is not known

Where a published source does not answer a question, the page says unverified and states the question. It does not estimate, interpolate, or take a plausible number from a related scheme. An estimate that reads like a finding is the specific failure this site exists to avoid, and a visible gap is more useful than a confident guess.

Nothing is ranked

GRS, OCS, GOTS, OEKO-TEX and the Materials Matter Standard measure different things for different purposes. Declaring one best requires knowing what the reader is trying to do, and we do not. Pages describe scope, requirements and limits, and leave the comparison where it belongs.

How a correction works

Send the page and what is wrong to hello@ecoworldwide.com or through the contact form. A source helps but is not required; a hunch that something looks off is worth sending.

• Within two working days you get an acknowledgement saying whether it is being checked, and against which source.
• Within ten working days the page is corrected, or you are told why it stands — with the document that settles it.
• A factual error is fixed on the page and logged at the foot of it with the date, what it said before, and what it says now. The original wording is not deleted from the record.
• If the error was material — a figure someone could have acted on — the note stays at the top of the page for thirty days rather than at the bottom.
• Typography, links and phrasing are fixed silently. Nothing that changes a fact is ever fixed silently.

Corrections are not conditional on who reports them. A company that dislikes an accurate page gets the source that supports it; a company that finds a genuine error gets a correction whether or not it is a client.

Independence, and what cannot be bought

• Nothing in the text can be bought. Not a mention, not a listing, not an entry in a table. The one thing that is for sale is a labelled sponsorship block, visibly separate from the page it sits on, and the terms are public.
• A sponsor gets no say in the page. No advance sight, no consultation, no veto, and no immunity from a correction that goes against them. If a standard a sponsor is certified to does not cover something, the page says so while their placement sits on it.
• No paid reviews. A company cannot pay to be assessed on this site, favorably or at all.
• No affiliate revenue. There are no commissions on any link here. If that ever changes it will be disclosed on the page it affects, not buried in a policy.
• No advertising network. There is no ad network, no auction, no retargeting and no third-party advertising script anywhere on this site, and there will not be. Every placement is sold directly and served from this domain.
• Client work is walled off. Paid engagements are described on the services page. Being a client earns no coverage, no favorable wording, and no immunity from a correction going the other way.
• Conflicts are declared on the page. If a page discusses an organization with which there is any commercial relationship, that is stated in the page itself.

How pages are produced

Drafting and formatting tools, including language models, are used in preparing pages. They are not used as a source. Every figure, date, citation and quotation is read against the primary document by a person before it is published, and anything that cannot be traced to that document is removed rather than smoothed over. If you find a figure on this site that does not appear in the source it names, that is a defect and reporting it will get it fixed.

Right of reply

An organization described on this site may send a response to what a page says about it. If the response is factual and on the record, it is published on the page alongside the material it answers. That is not a negotiation over the underlying source, and it is not available in exchange for anything.