Natural fibres are a good place to start
Linen, hemp, and the bast-fibre family have a structural sustainability advantage that cotton-dominant supply chains struggle to match. Flax — the plant linen comes from — is grown on rotation, requires little or no artificial irrigation, uses very little pesticide compared to cotton, and is harvested in a way that uses essentially the entire plant. Hemp is similar: fast-growing, low-input, and a good rotation crop for soil health.
Our product range leans into these inherently lower-impact fibres. Pure linen, hemp, linen-cotton, linen-viscose, linen-lyocell — every blend we make is anchored to a natural-fibre base, and the cellulosic blending partners (lyocell, modal) come from forestry-certified suppliers under our chain-of-custody scope.
Traceability
GOTS and OCS certification is fundamentally a traceability standard — the point isn't just that the input is certified, but that an unbroken paper trail connects every metre of finished fabric back to the certified input. Here's how it works at Govardhan:
- Certified yarn arrives from a certified spinner. Every shipment carries a Transaction Certificate (TC) issued by the relevant certifying body.
- Yarn is received and logged at our plant store with a goods receipt note. The TC is filed with the receipt and linked to the yarn lot number.
- Production programmes are planned such that certified yarn is kept separate from non-certified yarn at every stage — separate warehouse locations, separate warping, separate weaving runs. This is "chain of custody" in practice.
- Greige fabric produced from certified yarn is tracked with its own lot numbers that reference back to the yarn receipts.
- Certified subcontracted finishing processes the greige under the same scope, preserving the chain of custody through the dyeing and finishing stages.
- Finished fabric is invoiced with a Transaction Certificate that names the buyer, the quantity, and the scope under which the fabric was produced. The buyer can then continue the chain to their own buyer with their own TC.
Every link in that chain is audited annually. We don't claim anything we can't prove.
Certified chemistry
OEKO-TEX STANDARD 100 is the leading standard for human-ecological safety of
textiles — meaning "is this fabric safe to wear against skin, to sleep on, to have in your
home." Our scope 20.HIN.28168 covers 100% linen, cotton, viscose, lyocell,
micro modal, polyester, and blends. The standard tests for more than a hundred regulated
substances — heavy metals, formaldehyde, azo dyes, chlorinated phenols, pesticide residues —
and sets strict limit values for each.
Every fabric sold under our OEKO-TEX scope is backed by an annually renewed certificate and the associated test reports. Test reports are available under NDA to serious buyers.
Environmental classification of our plant
Our weaving plant holds the State Pollution Control Board classification of Green category — the lowest environmental-impact classification available for a textile weaving operation under the Central Pollution Control Board framework.
Weaving is fundamentally a dry process — fabric doesn't get wet on the loom — so the plant's water consumption is limited to humidification, drinking water, sanitation, and general cleaning. Most of the environmental impact of woven fabric happens at the dyeing and finishing stage, which we subcontract to certified facilities with their own consents and their own Pollution Control Board registrations.
Recycled content
Our GRS (Global Recycled Standard) scope covers recycled polyester in blended constructions. This is the chain-of-custody certification for brands needing recycled-content claims — such as "60% recycled polyester" — on a linen-polyester or cotton-polyester blend. Like GOTS and OCS, GRS requires certified input, segregated production, and transaction certificates at every handover.
Waste
Textile waste in a weaving operation falls into a few categories:
- Hard yarn waste (short ends, doffing waste) — collected and sold to textile waste recyclers who convert it into non-woven applications or back into regenerated yarn
- Fabric waste (inspection rejects, finishing rejects) — small quantities, recycled or used as sampling material
- Packaging waste — cardboard and plastic wrap from incoming yarn; recycled through standard municipal channels
- Office waste — paper and electronic waste handled through standard recycling
We don't yet publish quantitative waste numbers. When we have audited figures worth publishing, they'll appear here.
What we don't claim
Sustainability is a crowded marketing category and plenty of companies make claims they can't substantiate. To be explicit about what we do not claim:
- We are not a "carbon neutral" business. We have not completed a Scope 1/2/3 carbon inventory and we're not going to claim offsets we haven't measured.
- We do not run a water treatment plant on-site because we're a dry weaving operation — wet processing happens at certified subcontracted facilities with their own discharge consents.
- We do not claim organic status for 100% linen because flax, in commercial production, is cultivated under conventional (low-impact) agriculture rather than under organic certification.
What we do claim is: GOTS, OCS, GRS, and OEKO-TEX-certified production within our scope, Green-category environmental classification, three decades of supplier relationships that let us specify quality from input to output, and a vertically-integrated weaving operation that is auditable end to end. Every one of those is backed by a certificate, a government registration, or a verifiable third-party audit.
Questions welcome
If you're a buyer with a sustainability team and you need specifics — test reports, audit reports, subcontractor consents, traceability documentation — contact us and we'll arrange what you need, usually under NDA.