The Responsible Wool Standard (RWS), managed by Textile Exchange, is a voluntary standard. This page maps the evidence needed for a wool supply chain; it does not present RWS as an automatic customs, marketplace, or destination-market admission requirement.
1. What RWS covers—and what it does not
RWS addresses sheep welfare, land management, relevant social requirements, and traceability of certified material through the supply chain. Textile Exchange describes the certification chain as extending from wool farms to the seller in the final business-to-business transaction. Processing, spinning, weaving, dyeing, garment making, trading, and other sites should be mapped according to their actual roles.
RWS is not a product-safety, chemical, packaging, carbon-accounting, or customs regulation. If a market or customer imposes a separate requirement, map that requirement to the SKU separately; an RWS certificate is not a substitute for those records.
2. Organize evidence by certificate scope
Entities and sites: record the legal name, address, site role, subcontracting or outsourcing relationship, certification body, certificate number, scope, and applicable standard version. Keep the certificate itself and its scope; a supplier homepage screenshot is not a scope record.
Materials and products: link SKU, fiber composition, yarn/fabric/garment style, purchase lot, production order, and finished quantity. Separate RWS wool from other wool, recycled wool, and non-certified fibers so that claims do not cross material boundaries.
Transactions and quantities: retain invoices, purchase orders, packing lists, transport documents, lot or weight records, and applicable TCs for inbound, production, inventory, sale, and shipment movements. Textile Exchange defines a TC as a certification-body document that verifies products sold or shipped between organizations conform to the relevant standard; it should be read together with the transaction, quantities, and scope.
Audits and changes: retain certification applications, audit plans, corrective actions, site records, and correspondence with the certification body. The goal is to show that the site, material flow, and claim can be reconciled—not to collect unrelated test reports.
3. Check the product and transaction chain before making a claim
The RWS 2.2 document describes the wool-supply-chain scope and sets conditions for material eligibility, product-specific claims, and labeling. Before using the RWS name, logo, or a product claim on packaging or a webpage, check the current claims policy, logo guidance, certificate scope, and any label-release requirement from the certification body.
For each claim, preserve one evidence path: claim wording → SKU and composition → supplier and site → Scope Certificate → purchase or production lot → TC where applicable → finished label or webpage version → approval record. If one link cannot be reconciled, use a factual description instead of presenting the material as an approved RWS product claim.
4. Boundaries that are often confused
- A Scope Certificate describes an organization or site scope; it is not the transaction evidence for a particular shipment.
- A TC is used to reconcile a defined sale or shipment; its number, standard, product, quantity, and transaction dates should match business records.
- A supplier holding an RWS certificate does not automatically authorize every brand, trader, or final seller to make every RWS product claim.
- An RWS claim does not replace destination-market fiber labeling, product-safety, chemical, packaging, or customs documentation.
- Do not state fixed validity periods, audit outcomes, pass rates, penalty percentages, or marketplace delisting outcomes without a current, specific source.
5. Customer evidence checklist
- Entity, site, certification-body, certificate-number, and scope register;
- SKU, composition, yarn/fabric/garment lot, and purchase-order mapping;
- Scope Certificate, TC, invoices, packing lists, transport records, and quantity reconciliation;
- Label, packaging, and webpage versions, together with applicable approval or release records;
- Audit, corrective-action, and change records, especially after a supplier, site, material, or product change.
Sources and use boundary
This reference is based on Textile Exchange’s RWS overview and resources, Responsible Wool Standard 2.2, Content Claim Standard (CCS), CCS 3.1, and the standards claims and labeling guidance. Standards, claims policies, and customer requirements can change; use the applicable version, certification-body guidance, and transaction records. 绿色方舟（深圳）认证有限公司 provides evidence-mapping support and does not determine a customer’s certification outcome or market-admission result.
