Every responsible collection starts with a fibre choice, so it's worth knowing what the whole industry is actually doing. Textile Exchange's Materials Market Report — the most-cited annual dataset on global fibre production — gives a sobering but useful picture for 2024. Here are the numbers that matter, and what they mean when you're specifying materials.
Polyester still dominates
Synthetic fibres — led by polyester — made up roughly 69% of all fibre produced in 2024. Despite years of sustainability commitments, the industry's default material is still a fossil-based one, and total volumes keep rising. That's the backdrop against which every 'sustainable' claim has to be read.
Cotton, and the steady rise of certified cotton
Cotton accounted for around 24.5 million tonnes in 2024 — roughly 19% of the global fibre mix. The encouraging trend is certification: about 34% of cotton was grown under a certified or 'preferred' programme in 2024, a share that has climbed steadily as brands commit to verified sourcing. Organic cotton is a subset of that, backed by chain-of-custody standards like GOTS.
Recycled polyester: real, but mostly from bottles
Recycled polyester is the headline sustainable synthetic, but the detail matters. It sits at around 12% of the polyester market — roughly 9.3 million tonnes in 2024 — and the overwhelming majority of it is made from recycled PET drink bottles, not from old textiles. True textile-to-textile recycling is still under 1% of the total fibre market. Recycled content is a genuine improvement, but it isn't yet the closed loop the marketing often implies.
What this means for a responsible collection
The takeaway isn't cynicism — it's specificity. 'Sustainable' is only meaningful when it names a fibre and a standard: GOTS-certified organic cotton, a recycled-content claim with a transaction certificate, OEKO-TEX tested for chemistry. Vague claims don't survive due diligence; certified ones do.
This is exactly why our sister company, Collective Studio, runs GOTS-certified organic-cotton programmes for low-MOQ knitwear — so smaller brands can make a claim they can actually back. Across the Belle Vouz group we develop organic, recycled and conventional fibres to spec, and match the certification to the claim you want to make.