Cascale staff recently attended the Textile Exchange Conference 2026 in Vancouver, Canada. The event drew 1,600 attendees, 1,400 in person and 200 virtually, and featured 94 speakers across 28 sessions, including six plenaries, 17 breakouts and five workshops.

 Key Takeaways:

• The industry is ready to move from pilots to scaling proven practices, the focus of this year’s “Implementation Era” theme.
• Credible data is becoming central to corporate carbon reporting and product-level claims.
• Purchasing practices and new preferred materials are key levers for putting commitments into action.

The conference theme, “The Implementation Era,” prioritized putting proven practices into operation over continued experimentation. That focus showed in strong attendance at hands-on workshops and sessions on Textile Exchange’s new Materials Matter Standard.

Attendees included new practitioners to seasoned professionals from brands and manufacturers, as well as farmers and distributors promoting preferred materials. Cascale members in attendance included Reformation, GG International, Walmart, Lenzing, and Peterson Solutions, among others. Attending Cascale staff included Ashley Buchalter, manager, global membership development, AMER; Melissa Ortuño de León, senior manager, environmental impact methodologies; and Joël Mertens, director, environmental impact methodologies. Cascale Board member Tamar Hoek, senior policy director, sustainable fashion, Solidaridad, also attended.

Speakers spanned the industry and beyond, including finance, insurance, law and technology, with representatives from H&M, Woolmark, Fashion for Good, Canopy, Goodwill Industries International, CMS Germany, Risilience, and Black Pearl, among others. Sessions examined barriers to scaling preferred production systems, such as mismatched data requirements, weak incentives for producers, and limited feedstock for textile-to-textile recycling. Speakers also called for landscape-level collaboration on regenerative agriculture, as well as earlier alignment among sustainability, communications, and legal teams on credible claims.

Measuring and communicating impact emerged as a priority throughout the week. Companies are looking to connect facility and materials data, including from the Higg Facility Environmental Module (Higg FEM) and Higg Materials Sustainability Index (Higg MSI), stewarded by Cascale and exclusively available on Worldly, to their carbon accounting, water strategies, and corporate reporting. Product-level claims drew particular attention, with thorough documentation and established guidance such as the EU Green Claims Directive seen as essential. Broader manufacturer participation in shared tools like Higg FEM remains a key step toward implementation at scale.

A keynote session that stood out was by professor Gail Whiteman, Hoffmann impact professor for accelerating action on nature and climate at the University of Exeter and founder of Arctic Basecamp. Using data, Whiteman illustrated the scale and urgency of the climate crisis. And despite polarizing differences, Whiteman suggested that textiles can become a unifying cultural throughline. Her closing call to action was for attendees to empower action through “micro, ordinary, everyday courage.”

Responsible purchasing practices and sourcing decisions were also recurring themes from the event, especially for brands that run their own manufacturer programs. Growing interest in new materials, including bio-based fibers, also underscored the need for robust materials data to guide sourcing decisions. It’s an area where Cascale’s Better Buying offers a shared foundation for decent work.

Closing the conference, Textile Exchange’s chief executive officer Claire Bergkamp reflected on the energy of the three days and the clear opportunities to drive toward shared outcomes together. Textile Exchange 2027 will take place Oct 18-22 in Lisbon.