OCS.

Textile Exchange’s standard for tracing organically grown fibre from a certified farm through to the finished product, and nothing beyond that. Section B1.4 of OCS 3.0 applies it to products containing at least 5 % organically grown material, calculated across the whole product excluding accessories and trims, and the standard’s sections run to input verification, claims and chain of custody. There is no processing chemistry and no social criteria in it, which is the gap GOTS fills: GOTS covers chemical inputs, wastewater and human rights criteria across the whole processing chain and requires every company in that chain to be certified. A blank sold as “organic cotton, OCS certified” therefore says the cotton was grown organically and the paperwork followed it to the seller. It says nothing about the dyehouse that coloured it, which is where a direct-to-garment shop’s pretreatment and wash-fastness surprises usually originate.