Preferred materials (fibres certified to a recognised environmental or social standard) reached 72% of reported intake among companies in Textile Exchange's Materials Benchmark in 2025, up 4 percentage points year on year, CEO Claire Bergkamp told the nonprofit's annual meeting at the Vancouver Convention Center on Tuesday.

The figures include 82% of cotton and 76% of polyester sourced by reporting companies. By comparison, preferred materials account for just 37% of global cotton production and 12% of global polyester production — a gap that frames both the progress and the scale problem for sourcing teams tracking fibre-level targets.

"We are actually building on real progress," said Bergkamp, a former Stella McCartney executive. "We can sometimes feel very daunted by the size of the challenges ahead. But what I want to remind us is that the people in this room are doing the work, and I want us to just keep doing the work."

What's driving the numbers?

Global fibre production grew from 109 million tons in 2020 to 139 million tons in 2025 — what Bergkamp called an "enormous increase" in five years. Only 20% of that volume comes from preferred fibre systems.

Her ask to the industry: "fight for that next 20 percent," then the next after that. A decade ago, she noted, most in the sector would only have dreamed of a 20% share.

The near-term constraint isn't ambition, she argued, but inconsistent market signals that make it hard for suppliers and investors to commit — whether that's a farmer changing practices or a backer funding textile-to-textile recycling (turning waste fabric back into new fibre) infrastructure.

"You need confidence that those investments can be sustained," Bergkamp said.

What does Materials Matter change?

The headline announcement for compliance teams is the launch of Materials Matter, a unified sustainability framework that merges and replaces several of the material-specific standards buyers currently audit against:

• Global Recycled Standard
• Recycled Claims Standard
• Responsible Wool Standard
• Responsible Mohair Standard
• Responsible Alpaca Standard

Bergkamp positioned the consolidation as an alignment play rather than a new benchmark. "This is about alignment. It's about connection. It's about clarity," she said. "It's about a moment that we can create to cut through some of the noise and the pressure that we all feel."

For sourcing directors, that means certification workflows currently spread across multiple standards will converge into one framework over time — a change worth mapping against existing supplier compliance audits now rather than mid-transition.

The consolidation follows Bergkamp's broader argument that the industry's experimental phase is over. "We've spent decades experimenting, learning, building evidence, demonstrating what better practice can look like on the ground," she said. "But demonstrating what works and creating the conditions for wider adoption are two different things."

It's time, she added, to "put our chips down and make a bet" on what the evidence already supports.

What's the sourcing decision?

The numbers cut both ways. Reporting companies are moving — 72% preferred intake is a real shift — but they sit inside a market still 80% conventional fibre, and volume growth is outpacing conversion.

"We have seen it happen," Bergkamp said of the change to date. "With everything we've learned, the relationships we've built, the new ideas and energies we're bringing together, I just want us to imagine what we can unlock together next."

The practical takeaway for buyers: start planning now for the transition of GRS-, RCS- and Responsible Wool-certified supply onto the Materials Matter framework, and treat the 72% benchmark figure as the floor your fibre strategy gets measured against.