Oeko-Tex

Standards organisation in the textiles industry

Oeko Tex is a registered trade mark of the International Association for Research and Testing in the Field of Textile and Leather Ecology. It is used to represent the product labels and company certificates issued by the Association. Oeko Tex labels and certificates confirm the safety of textile products and leather articles from all stages of production. Some also attest to social and environmental conditions in production facilities.

The Oeko Tex Association was founded in March 1992 by the Austrian Textile Research Institute (now de) and the German Hohenstein Institute. The Swiss textile testing institute Testex joined in 1993. Other European and Asian testing and research institutes joined in the following years. In 2016, the association reached its current membership count of 17. In the first year of operation, Oeko Tex launched Oeko Tex Standard 100, which emerged from an earlier label developed by OETI in 1989. followed by Oeko Tex Standard 100plus, which also examined production processes. At the beginning of the 2000s, Oeko Tex Standard 1000 was scrutinized and social aspects and occupational safety were added. As a result, in 2013, Oeko Tex launched the STeP (Sustainable Textile Production) certification system for sustainable textile production. In 2023, Oeko Tex launched the certification Organic Cotton.

The Oeko Tex Association offers a certification system for companies to review and improve their supply chains. They are developed as a modular system to cover the textile and leather value chain in terms of input, process, and output control as well as supply chain management. The testing system is based on audits of production sites, testing in laboratories as well as evaluation of textile products. Oeko Tex partners with initiatives such as Zero Discharge of Hazardous Chemicals (ZDHC). It is a member of the International Social and Environmental Accreditation and Labelling Alliance (de) and its labels operate in line with several Sustainable Development Goals.

The Standard 100 product label, introduced in 1992, certifies adherence to the specifications of the standard by the same name, a document of testing methods and limit values for potentially harmful chemicals.

Made in Green is a label that certifies the testing of textile and leather products for harmful substances and materials, as well as evaluating environmental production and worklplace safety. The Made in Green label replaced the former Oeko Tex Standard 100plus label in 2015. The Made in Green label is valid for one year.

Eco Passport is a certification system through which producers of textile and leather processing chemicals and chemical compounds can corroborate that their products are suitable for sustainable textile and leather production. The program features three sequential assessments, and products that pass all three steps are granted the Eco Passport certification. This label allows for those products to be used in Standard 100 certified products and by STeP certified manufacturing plants.

The Leather Standard (introduced 2017) is a system of testing methods, testing criteria and limit values for harmful substances used by the Oeko Tex member institutes to globally certify the human ecological safety of leather products: semi finished leather materials ("Wet blue" – chrome tanned hides, "Wet white" – vegetable tanned hides), leather, bonded leather and ready made leather articles. When certifying leather products contain non leather (e. g. textile or metallic) components, the requirements of the Leather Standard are combined with those of the Standard 100. Certification according to the Leather Standard is valid for one year. The Leather Standard defines the same four product classes as the Standard 100. Both also employ very similar catalogues of limit values for potentially harmful chemicals.

Fashion and textile products with the Organic Cotton label are made with organic cotton, grown without GMOs (genetically modified organisms) or pesticides, and were tested for other harmful substances. For the label, Oeko Tex developed a method that can test quantitatively for genetically modified organisms. For verification of organic origin, Oeko Tex’s GMO quantification method differentiates between contamination and purposeful mixing of conventional cotton. The certification works in compliance with several regulations including EU REACH Annex XIV and XVII, US CPSIA (lead) and EU POP regulation.