GRS Certification Explained: What It Proves, What It Does Not, and How to Check It

GRS matters more now than it ever has. Environmental claims used to be marketing. Regulation has turned them into claims you have to prove, with documents, to somebody else’s satisfaction. The Global Recycled Standard is the document most buyers will be asked to produce.

This is the full guide. Everything you need to know before you place an order.

Start with the part that catches most buyers out. Almost every supplier now sends a GRS certificate with the quotation, ours included, and the document nearly everyone is sent is a scope certificate. A scope certificate does not prove that your order contains a single gram of recycled material. It proves the supplier sits inside a certified chain of custody. The document that covers your goods is a different one, it is called a transaction certificate, and it is issued after the shipment, only if somebody applies for it.

Buyers who do not know that difference are holding paperwork that will not survive their own customer’s audit.

What follows: what GRS actually certifies, how a supplier gets certified, how to read a certificate line by line, how to verify one in about five minutes without asking the supplier for anything, and what you may and may not legally say about it. We use our own certificate as the worked example, including what a scope certificate cannot tell you about an individual order.

Key Takeaways

• GRS certifies products with at least 20% recycled content. Below 20% it is not a GRS product. Consumer-facing GRS product labelling needs 50%.
• A scope certificate and a transaction certificate are not the same thing. The scope certificate says a company is certified. The transaction certificate says a specific shipment was certified. You need the second one.
• The transaction certificate must be applied for by the seller, and there is a deadline. Under the current policy, the certification body must issue the TC if a complete application arrives within 90 calendar days of the earliest shipment date, and may issue it up to 180 calendar days. Under the new policy, which certification bodies may use from 1 October 2026 and must use from 1 April 2027, the “must” window is 180 calendar days. Under both policies, a TC for final products such as bags may be issued up to 365 calendar days after shipment. Ask for the TC when you place the order.
• A GRS certificate is not a factory certificate. It has process categories on it. Trading, knitting, dyeing, assembly and so on. Read them.
• GRS does not address product quality. The standard says so in its own text. A GRS bag is not a good bag. It is a bag with a verified recycled input.
• Virgin polypropylene has no GRS route. GRS certifies recycled content. Recycled PP raffia and recycled non-woven can be GRS. Virgin PP cannot, at any price.
• You can verify any certificate yourself, on Textile Exchange’s own database, without asking the supplier.

1. What GRS is

The Global Recycled Standard is a voluntary, third-party verified standard owned by Textile Exchange, a non-profit standards body. Our certificate is issued under GRS 4.0, released 1 July 2017. Textile Exchange published GRS 5.0 in July 2026, and GRS itself is being replaced by the Materials Matter Standard, effective 31 December 2026 and mandatory from 31 December 2027. It applies to any product containing 20% or more recycled content, and while it came out of the textile industry, the standard itself says it “may apply to any supply chain”.

GRS covers four things at once, which is what separates it from a simple recycled-content claim:

1. Recycled content. The standard uses the ISO 14021 definition of recycled content, interpreted against the US FTC Green Guides. Only pre-consumer and post-consumer material counts. Pre-consumer is material diverted from the waste stream during manufacturing, and it specifically excludes rework, regrind or scrap that a process reclaims back into itself. That exclusion matters. A factory that melts its own trimmings back into the line has not created recycled content, it has just run an efficient process.

2. Chain of custody. GRS uses the chain-of-custody requirements of the Content Claim Standard. Every stage of production has to be certified, “beginning at the recycling stage and ending at the last seller in the final business-to-business transaction”. For an on-product claim on a final product sold to consumers, the Textile Exchange Standards Claims Policy goes further and requires certification up to the brand (section 9). Material collection and material concentration sites sit outside full certification and are covered by self-declaration, document collection and site visits.

3. Social requirements. Section B of the standard, based on the principles of the Global Social Compliance Programme: forced and bonded labour, child labour, freedom of association, discrimination and harassment, health and safety, wages, working hours. Where local law and the standard disagree, the stricter one applies.

4. Environmental and chemical requirements. Section C requires an environmental management system and a chemical management system, and sets criteria on energy, water, wastewater, air emissions and waste. Section D restricts hazardous chemicals in processing, including exclusion of substances that fail the ZDHC Manufacturer Restricted Substance List.

That is a real audit. It is the reason GRS carries more weight with a European retailer than a self-declared recycled percentage on a spec sheet.

“GRS is four audits wearing one badge. Recycled content, chain of custody, labour, chemicals. Most buyers only ask about the first one, and then they are surprised when their own compliance team asks about the other three.”

Simmy Lin, Managing Director, Bk-bags

2. What GRS is not

This section exists because the gap between what GRS certifies and what buyers assume it certifies is where the expensive mistakes live.

GRS is not a quality standard. The standard states it plainly: “The GRS does not address quality or legal compliance.” A GRS certified bag can have weak handle stitching, a print that cracks, and a seam that fails at 8 kg. Certification says nothing about any of that. Quality is your specification and your inspection, and it always was.

GRS is not a factory certificate. Every scope certificate carries process categories. A certificate whose only process category is Trading belongs to a trading entity, not to a production site. Both are legitimate, and both are common, but they do not mean the same thing. A trader can hold GRS and FSC chain-of-custody certification without owning a single machine.

GRS is not proof that your shipment contained recycled material. That is the transaction certificate, and it is section 4.

GRS is not available for virgin material. GRS certifies recycled content. Virgin polypropylene raffia has no GRS route and never will, regardless of who is offering it. If a quotation offers you GRS certified virgin PP, that quotation is either a misunderstanding or a fabrication. Recycled PP raffia and recycled PP non-woven do have a GRS route, as does RPET.

GRS does not clear your regulatory obligations. It does not by itself satisfy the EU PPWR recycled-content evidence route, and in Spain it does not reduce the plastic packaging tax base, which requires certification under UNE-EN 15343 from an accredited body. Those are separate documents. Ask for them separately.

“A buyer once told me his customer rejected a container because the bags tore. He waved the GRS certificate at me. I had to explain that the certificate is about where the plastic came from, not about how well we sewed it. Both matter. They are just not the same document.”

Simmy Lin, Managing Director, Bk-bags

3. GRS, RCS and the claims that are not certifications

RCS is the lighter sibling. Same tracking logic, no processing requirements. It is a legitimate certificate and it is cheaper to hold, but it says less. If a supplier’s certificate is RCS and their sales deck says GRS, that is worth a question.

A supplier declaration of recycled percentage is not certification in any sense. It is a sentence in an email. It will not hold up in a customer audit and it will not hold up under the EU rules that come into force this month.

4. The two documents that matter

This is the section to read twice.

The scope certificate (SC)

The scope certificate is issued to a company after a successful audit. It lists the certified legal entity, the certified sites, the standards, the product categories, the process categories and the materials the company is certified to handle. It has a validity period, normally a maximum of one year for a one-year certificate.

What it proves: this company was audited, and it is authorised to handle these materials, at these sites, doing these processes, until this date.

What it does not prove: anything at all about your order.

The transaction certificate (TC)

The transaction certificate is issued for a shipment. Under Textile Exchange’s new Policy for Scope and Transaction Certificates, effective 1 October 2026 and mandatory from 1 April 2027, the certificate is built in nine boxes: the certification body, the seller, the buyer, the weights, the certification body’s declarations, the shipments, the certified products, the components, and the seller’s declarations. Until April 2027 certification bodies may still use the older layout, numbered Box 1 to Box 12, so most certificates issued in 2026 look like that. GRS additionally requires that pre-consumer and post-consumer content percentages are “recorded separately for each batch at every certified site and recorded on the transaction certificate”.

For a worked rPET example, see how to read a GRS transaction certificate for an rPET order.

That is your evidence. Product, quantity, shipment documents, buyer name, recycled percentage, split by pre and post-consumer, signed by an accredited certification body.

Three mechanics buyers should know:

1. The seller applies, not the buyer. The certification body has to receive a complete and valid application from the seller before it can issue anything. If your supplier never applies, no TC exists, and there is nothing you can do about it after the fact.
2. There is a deadline. Under the current policy, the certification body shall issue the TC if a complete and valid application arrives within 90 calendar days after the earliest shipment date. It may issue it up to 180 calendar days. Under the new policy, which certification bodies may use from 1 October 2026 and must use from 1 April 2027, the window in which it shall issue the TC is 180 calendar days. Both policies allow up to 365 calendar days in listed cases, including where all products on the certificate are final products, but do not build a process around an exception.
3. Once applied for, it is quick. The certification body has 14 calendar days to issue a TC after receiving a complete and valid application, and 14 days to notify the seller if the application is deficient.

There is also a rule most people never meet until it bites: a TC cannot stay open past the end of the seller’s scope certificate validity, and once a scope certificate expires without renewal, the certification body may still issue a TC if the application arrives within 30 days, and shall not issue one if the application arrives more than 90 days after expiry.

“Ask for the transaction certificate in the purchase order, not after the audit. There is a deadline on it, and it is the seller who has to apply. A buyer who asks eight months after the container landed is asking for something nobody can legally issue any more.”

Simmy Lin, Managing Director, Bk-bags

The one-line version: the scope certificate says we are in the certified chain. The transaction certificate says this order was.

5. How a product becomes GRS certified

The process runs on the supplier side, but buyers should understand it, because the timeline decides whether GRS is even possible on the order you are about to place.

Step 1. Confirm the material has a GRS route. Recycled PP, recycled PET and recycled polyester do. Virgin material does not. This is the step that kills most requests before they start.

Step 2. Choose an approved certification body. Only certification bodies licensed by Textile Exchange and accredited by an approved accreditation body can issue GRS certificates. You may apply to several to compare price and timeline. Ours is IDFL, licence code CB-IDF, accredited by TAF under number PC054.

Step 3. Application and contract. The certification body quotes based on your sites, processes and volumes, and the contract typically runs one year.

Step 4. Prepare the system before the audit. This is the real work: a documented chain of custody, incoming transaction certificates for every recycled input, a material ledger that reconciles input to output, batch records that separate pre-consumer from post-consumer, social policies and records, an environmental management system, a chemical management system and safety data sheets.

Step 5. The audit. An auditor reviews documents and procedures against the standard, on site. Non-conformities are closed through a corrective action plan.

Step 6. Certificate issuance. The scope certificate is issued as a PDF and uploaded to Textile Exchange’s Trackit system, which is the single source of truth for all scope and transaction certificates.

Step 7. Then, per shipment, the transaction certificate. Every recycled material entering the supply chain must arrive with a valid TC from an approved certification body, and every outgoing certified shipment needs its own.

Step 8. Annual renewal, plus unannounced inspections. Certification bodies may conduct unannounced inspections during the validity period.

Two exemptions worth knowing. Retailers selling to end consumers only, and traders with less than USD 10,000 annual turnover of GRS products, are exempt from the certification obligation, provided they do not repack or relabel GRS products. Exempt small traders still have to register with an approved certification body and tell it the moment they cross the threshold.

Budget realistically. Most of the time goes on building documentation, not on waiting for the auditor, and the cost depends on the number of sites, processes and standards. Nobody publishes a price list, and any supplier who tells you certification is instant has not done it.

6. How to read a scope certificate, line by line

Every GRS scope certificate carries the same fields. Here is what each one tells you, and the question it should trigger.

The single most useful habit: check the process categories and the site list together. A certificate listing Trading only, at an office address, is a chain-of-custody certificate for a trading company. That is a perfectly valid thing to hold. It is not evidence that the factory making your bags was audited.

“The process category line is where the marketing stops and the document starts. If it says Trading and the sales deck says certified factory, those are two different claims and only one of them is on paper.”

Simmy Lin, Managing Director, Bk-bags

7. The Bk-bags GRS certificate in full

We publish ours, in full.

One thing we want stated plainly, because most suppliers leave it out. This certificate does not prove the recycled content of your order. Nothing on any scope certificate can. The proof for delivered goods is the transaction certificate for that order, and that is what you should be writing into your purchase order. Tell us the product and the volume and we will tell you exactly which certificate covers it.

What it does prove, and it is useful. The material list names recycled post-consumer and pre-consumer polypropylene alongside polyester, PE, PET and PS. That is documentary confirmation that our certificate covers recycled PP as a material, as well as PET. It is also the document that ends the argument about virgin PP: there is no GRS route for it.

8. How to verify any GRS certificate in five minutes

You do not need to ask the supplier’s permission, and you should not rely on a PDF alone. A PDF is a file. Files are editable.

1. Use Textile Exchange’s Find a Certified Company database. It draws directly from Trackit, Textile Exchange’s system of record, and it is the only official source for authenticating a scope certificate: textileexchange.org/find-certified-company. Search by company name or by TE-ID.

2. The link or QR code printed on the certificate. Textile Exchange requires certification bodies to print a URL or QR code on the certificate, in the form certificates.textileexchange.org/sc/TE-00000000, where the number is the organisation’s TE-ID. Ours is TE-00345697. Checked in September 2026, that address sits behind a sign-in and does not open for the public, so treat it as a reference printed on the document rather than a check you can run yourself. Use Find a Certified Company instead, which Textile Exchange describes as the central source of truth for scope certificates.

3. Authenticate transaction certificates separately. Scope certificates and transaction certificates are verified in different places. Transaction certificates go through the Authenticate a Transaction page: textileexchange.org/authenticate-transaction. Each TC also has its own unique URL in the form certificates.textileexchange.org/tc/0000.

4. Check four things while you are there. Is it valid today. Does the certified organization match the entity on your invoice. Is your material on the list. Do the process categories match what you were told.

5. If anything does not reconcile, contact the certification body. It is named on the certificate with its licence code. Certification bodies answer this kind of question, because their accreditation depends on the system being trusted.

“Any supplier who is unhappy about you verifying their certificate has told you something useful. It takes five minutes and the database is public. We would rather you checked.”

Simmy Lin, Managing Director, Bk-bags

9. What you can say, and what you cannot

This has stopped being a matter of good manners. From 27 September 2026 the EU Directive on empowering consumers for the green transition applies, and it bans generic environmental claims such as “eco-friendly” unless the trader can demonstrate recognised excellent environmental performance, which in practice means the EU Ecolabel or an officially recognised ecolabel, restricts sustainability labels that are not based on a certification scheme or established by a public authority, and prohibits carbon-neutrality claims based on offsetting. In the United States, the FTC Green Guides treat an unqualified recycled-content claim as a claim about the whole product, so a partial percentage must be stated.

Textile Exchange has its own rules on top of the law, in the Standards Claims Policy (TE-301, currently V1.4, effective 8 October 2025) and the Standards Logo Use Specifications (TE-302).

What you can say

• “Made with X% GRS certified recycled polypropylene”, where the percentage is the share of the whole product by weight, worked out from the certified weight on the transaction certificate, or the share of a named component. On a final product sold to consumers this is a GRS product claim: the brand needs its own GRS certification, and the claim carries the licence number and certification body of the claim maker.
• “Made with X% recycled polypropylene by weight”, your own specific claim with no GRS name or logo, backed by the transaction certificate. This is the route for a brand that is not GRS certified.
• The GRS logo on a product, only where the product contains at least 50% recycled content, only where certification runs up to the brand, which means the brand on the product holds its own GRS certification (Standards Claims Policy TE-301 V1.4, clause B3.1.2), and only with your certification body’s formal claim approval in advance. Product-related claims have to be approved by the certification body before use, and those approvals are reported to Textile Exchange.
• Informational statements using the approved wording of Textile Exchange, such as “The Global Recycled Standard (GRS) verifies recycled content and tracks it from the recycler to the final product”, provided they cannot be read as a claim that your own product is certified.

What you cannot say

• “We are a GRS certified company.” Certification attaches to certified products, sites and scopes, not to an organization in general.
• “GRS certified” on a product between 20% and 50% recycled content, in consumer-facing labelling. It is a GRS product, it is not eligible for the product label.
• “GRS certified” with only a scope certificate behind it. Without a transaction certificate covering those goods, the claim is not supported.
• “GRS certified” on virgin material. There is no such thing.
• “Eco-friendly”, “green”, “sustainable” as free-standing claims justified by a GRS certificate. GRS verifies recycled content and processing criteria. It does not license a generic environmental claim, and generic claims are exactly what the EU rules now target.
• The GRS logo on packaging unless the packaging itself is certified.
• Any logo use at all without prior approval from the certification body.

“The safest sentence is the boring one. Say the material, say the percentage, say which certificate it sits on. Adjectives are what regulators read twice.”

Simmy Lin, Managing Director, Bk-bags

10. Twenty questions to ask before you approve a GRS order

Copy this into your RFQ. Answers in writing.

On the certificate

1. Is the certificate you are sending me a scope certificate or a transaction certificate?
2. What is the certificate number, the TE-ID, and the valid-until date?
3. Which certification body issued it, and what is its licence code?
4. Is it GRS or RCS, and which version?
5. Which sites are on the certificate, and is the site producing my order one of them?
6. What are the process categories, exactly as printed?
7. Is my material named on the certificate?
8. Will the certificate still be valid on my shipment date?

On my order

9. Will you apply for a transaction certificate for my shipment, and by when?
10. What recycled percentage will appear on it?
11. What is the split between pre-consumer and post-consumer content?
12. Which shipment documents will the TC reference?
13. Which legal entity will be named as seller, and does it match the invoice?
14. Do the incoming materials for my order arrive with their own valid transaction certificates?

On the chain

15. Where does the recycled material come from, and who recycled it?
16. Is the recycling stage certified, and by whom?
17. If subcontractors are used, are they inside the certified scope?

On claims

18. What exactly may I print on the product and on the packaging?
19. Has the certification body approved that claim in writing?
20. If my product is under 50% recycled content, what changes about what I can say?

Any supplier who has actually done this can answer all twenty in one email. That is the point of the list.

FAQ

What does GRS certified actually mean? It means a product contains at least 20% recycled content, verified by an accredited third-party certification body, with the chain of custody documented from the recycling stage through to the last seller in the final business-to-business transaction, and with the processing sites meeting the standard’s social, environmental and chemical requirements. It does not mean the product is high quality, and it does not by itself prove the content of any particular shipment.

What is the difference between a scope certificate and a transaction certificate? A scope certificate is issued to a company after an audit and lists the sites, products, processes and materials it is certified for, with a validity period of normally up to one year. A transaction certificate is issued for a specific shipment and states the products, quantities, buyer, seller and verified recycled percentage, split between pre-consumer and post-consumer content. The scope certificate shows that a supplier is in the certified chain. Only the transaction certificate proves the recycled content of your goods.

Who applies for the transaction certificate, and when? The seller applies to its certification body, and the buyer should require it in the purchase order. The certification body issues the certificate within 14 calendar days of a complete and valid application. Under the current policy it shall issue the certificate if the application arrives within 90 calendar days of the earliest shipment date, and may issue it up to 180 calendar days. Under the new policy, which certification bodies may use from 1 October 2026 and must use from 1 April 2027, that window is 180 calendar days. Under both policies, a TC for final products such as bags may be issued up to 365 calendar days after shipment. Do not rely on the longer windows.

Is 20% or 50% the GRS minimum? Both, for different purposes. A product needs at least 20% recycled content to be a GRS product at all. Consumer-facing product labelling with the GRS logo requires at least 50%, plus certification up to the brand, plus prior claim approval from the certification body. A brand that is not GRS certified cannot put the GRS logo on its own products; it can make its own specific recycled-content claim, backed by the transaction certificate.

Can virgin PP bags be GRS certified? No. GRS certifies recycled content, so there is no GRS route for virgin polypropylene. Recycled PP raffia and recycled PP non-woven can be GRS certified, as can recycled polyester and RPET. Any offer of GRS certified virgin material should be treated as a red flag.

How do I verify a GRS certificate is genuine? Search the certified organization on Textile Exchange’s Find a Certified Company database, which is the only official source for authenticating scope certificates, or follow the URL or QR code printed on the certificate, which resolves to the record on Textile Exchange’s website. Transaction certificates are verified separately through the Authenticate a Transaction page. If anything does not reconcile, contact the certification body named on the certificate.

Does a GRS certificate prove my supplier owns a factory? No. Read the process categories. A certificate showing only Trading belongs to a trading entity, and a trader can legitimately hold GRS chain-of-custody certification without owning production. To have a production site inside the certified chain, that site has to appear on a certificate with the relevant process categories.

Does a GRS certificate satisfy the EU PPWR or the Spanish plastic packaging tax? Not on its own. GRS is the strongest widely available third-party evidence of recycled content and it will support a customer audit, but the PPWR recycled-content evidence route depends on calculation and equivalence methodologies that the European Commission still has to adopt, and the Spanish plastic packaging tax requires certification under UNE-EN 15343 from a body accredited by ENAC or an equivalent accreditor. Ask for the GRS certificate now and agree in writing that the supplier will provide updated evidence when the other requirements are settled.

How long does GRS certification take, and what does it cost? Most of the time goes on building documentation rather than waiting for the audit. Cost depends on the number of sites, the processes covered and the certification body, and no public price list exists. Applying to more than one approved certification body to compare offers is normal practice.

Talk to us with the certificate open

We supply reusable bags and packaging from Vietnam and China, and we have been doing it since 2006. Our GRS scope certificate is published above in full,.

If you want GRS material on your next programme, tell us the product and the volume, and we will tell you which certificate covers it, what the transaction certificate will say, and which claim route applies to your brand.

Contact us · PP woven bags · PP non-woven bags · RPET bags · Polyester bags

Sources: Textile Exchange, Global Recycled Standard 4.0 (1 July 2017); Textile Exchange, Policy for Scope and Transaction Certificates TE-TXL-POL-203-V4.0 (published 1 April 2026, effective 1 October 2026); Textile Exchange, Standards Claims Policy TE-301-V1.4 (8 October 2025); Directive (EU) 2024/825; FTC Green Guides, 16 CFR Part 260. Bk-bags scope certificate IDF-26-1040972 issued by IDFL, 30 June 2026.

About the author

Simmy Lin is Managing Director at Bk-bags, a supplier of reusable shopping bags and packaging producing in Vietnam and China since 2006.