Textile Exchange released the 2024 iteration of its Material Change Index (MCI), a product of the Materials Benchmark program that tracks the textile sector’s progress toward more sustainable materials sourcing and the transition to a circular economy.
Billed as the largest voluntary peer-to-peer comparison initiative in the textile industry, the 2024 iteration features 125 reporting companies, including new additions like American Eagle Outfitters and KowTow Clothing, as well as returning stalwarts like Patagonia and Faherty.
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Here’s how the ranking works: the “performance banding” is the result of a participant’s overall efforts.
The band score is based on four sections. The business integration (weighted 20 percent) section reflects the participants’ raw materials sourcing strategy and how that strategy is integrated into the given brand’s core business. The circular economy section accounts for 10 percent and reflects a company’s progress toward designing, building and tracking progress toward a circular textile system. Also weighted at 10 percent is the impact area, which reflects participants’ prioritization of climate and nature in raw materials management and sourcing.
Unsurprisingly, the materials portfolio section accounts for 60 percent of the performance banding. This section collects participant uptake data across 14 raw materials and tracks and records the use (volume) of conventional and preferred raw materials. This section is the only mandatory part of the Materials Benchmark Survey. The eight raw materials covered—cotton, polyester, polyamide, man-made cellulosic fiber (MMCF), wool, down, leather and cashmere—are based on the most popular materials reported by the 2024 cohort.
Based on a given brand’s total score across all four bands, there are (another) four possible, numerically ranked tiers a brand can fall into. The “developing” designation (rank No. 1) is for companies “laying the foundation” of their programs. The next phase, “establishing” (No. 2), is for those “strengthening” accountability. “Scaling” (No. 3) is for companies “mainstreaming materials programs,” and “leading” (No. 4) is for companies leading “transformational” change.
Of the 125 brands within the MCI, only 11 (8.8 percent) were ranked in the last—aka best—tier of “leading.” That includes all six of 2023’s leaders (Everlane, H&M Group, Kalani Home, Outerknown, Patagonia and Tentree) and five newcomers, including Ikea, Kowtow, Norrona, Puma and Smartwool.
Puma, for instance, received fours across the three secondary bands (business impact, circular economy and impact areas)—a step up from 2023’s overall designation in the second-highest tier, “scaling.” When comparing the Re:Suede sneaker maker’s scorecard year-over-year, three of the four bands remained the same—only Puma’s materials portfolio section, which holistically consisted of the same eight fibers, changed.
This year, Rudolf Dassler-founded firm reported on cotton (Puma scored 3 and the industry average was 2 and the sub-sector average was 3), polyester (scored 4 with industry average of 2), MMCF (scored 2 with industry average of 2) and leather(2 with industry average of 1). Last year, Puma reported on cotton, polyester and down (all three scored 3 with an industry average of 2).
“We know how important our choice of product materials is, when we want to reduce our carbon footprint and lessen our environmental impact,” said Anne-Laure Descours, Puma’s chief sourcing officer. “We are very happy to be ranked as ‘Leading’ in this years’ index and we will take it as an opportunity to further strengthen our materials strategy.”
In 2021, Puma set the 2025 target of making nine out of 10 products with preferred materials, either classified by Textile Exchange or originating from certified sources. In 2023, the German giant reported that 99.7 percent of all leather was sourced from Leather Working Group-certified tanneries, with 99.2 percent of all its cotton was certified or recycled. As the company began scaling up recycled efforts, about 65 percent of Puma’s polyester also came from recycled materials.
Per Textile Exchange’s recent Materials Benchmark report, these material changes are of note.
While the reported share of raw materials under sustainability programs marginally increased a few percentage points from 2022 to 2023, the share of brands with formal climate targets increased from 66 percent to 79 percent, while the share of brands that implemented measures to reduce impacts on climate and nature during raw materials production also increased, hitting 86 percent in 2023 against 79 percent in 2022. Plus, the total fiber and raw material usage (as shared by reporting brands) dropped from around 2.3 million metric tons in 2022 to 2.1 million metric tons in 2023—indicative of a (albeit small) decrease in the use of fossil-based synthetics.
That said, less than 1 percent of all fibers used by the brands and retailers were from textile-to-textile feedstocks from post-consumer textiles in 2023. Those brands and retailers are also continuing to struggle with traceability. Eighty percent of all cotton—and 75 percent of all polyester—sourced by reporting brands was from an unknown country of origin.
