Stella McCartney says on its recycled cashmere page that “Since 2016, we have only used recycled cashmere”, and that its knitwear collections are made from certified recycled Re.Verso™ cashmere. The brand says the material offers the same soft, insulating qualities as virgin cashmere with an environmental impact “seven times lower”.
That comparison is the brand’s own. The standard named alongside it is a third-party one: Stella McCartney says Re.Verso™ is “also GRS (Global Recycling Standard) certified – guaranteeing that every recycling step is traceable and verified”.
The same page sets out the brand’s reasoning for dropping virgin fibre. It says four goats are needed to produce enough fibre for a single cashmere sweater, while one sheep produces enough for five wool sweaters. It also says around 70 per cent of the Mongolian grasslands have been damaged and overgrazed by the roughly 30 million cashmere goats there now, against 2.3 million goats in Mongolia in 1994.
Stella McCartney says that stopping virgin cashmere in 2016 cut its cashmere-related environmental impact by 92 per cent, as calculated using its EP&L. By the brand’s account, cashmere accounted for 28 per cent of its total environmental impact in 2014 while making up 0.1 per cent of its material usage; by 2016 that share had fallen to 11 per cent, even though overall cashmere use was 34 per cent higher than in 2015.
What GRS certification covers
All four pages name the Global Recycled Standard, and each describes it slightly differently. The claim concerns recycled content and chain of custody; it is not a measure of a finished garment’s carbon footprint.
Manteco, the Tuscan mill behind MCashmere®, says the fibre is fully GRS-certified and that the standard “verifies every stage of production to guarantee the exact recycled content of our materials, ensuring full supply chain traceability alongside strict compliance with social and environmental criteria”.
The Paris label bobbin & tricot says on its traceability page that its regenerated cashmere yarn is GRS certified, “ensuring verified recycled content and traceability throughout the supply chain”. The same yarn is certified to OEKO-TEX® Standard 100, which the brand says means it has been tested for harmful substances against internationally recognised criteria. Such standards, it says, give independent assurance of origin, composition and responsible production.
Lanaioli says its regenerated cashmere carries GRS certification and comes from a traceable supply chain. Certification of this kind is one of the few markers an outside reader can check when comparing ethical knitwear brands, because the impact numbers on these pages come from different calculations: Stella McCartney’s 92 per cent is its own EP&L figure, while Manteco cites a peer-reviewed assessment.
The Italian mills behind the yarn
Stella McCartney describes Re.Verso™ as recycled cashmere made from post-factory cashmere waste in Italy. Cashmere waste is sorted by hand to tell different fibres apart; because most Re.Verso™ yarns are not redyed, materials are sorted by colour as well as fibre before being tested for content and chemical safety.
Lanaioli draws on the same chain. Its regenerated cashmere page says the yarn is a Re.Verso™ product made for the brand by Filpucci Spa, a Tuscan spinning mill in Campi Bisenzio (FI), from recovered cashmere material. The brand says it has bought Re.Verso™ yarns since 2026, that impact is measured through life cycle assessment, that traceability runs from material collection to yarn, and that knitting is done in Italian artisan workshops.
Lanaioli also sets out the mechanics of recovery. Recovered material is sorted by hand, with impurities and anything that is not cashmere removed and the rest separated by colour. It is then shredded and carded in much the same way as virgin cashmere, before being reinforced by twisting and spun into new regenerated cashmere yarn.
Manteco says MCashmere® is made from pre- and post-consumer cashmere garments that are selected, opened, carded and spun again, with colour created without dyes through its Recype® process, and production run through what the mill calls its zero-mile MSystem supply chain in Tuscany. The company says the recycling route is a fully industrialised, established process rather than a future ambition.
Manteco also cites a life cycle assessment carried out with researchers from HES-SO, EPFL and the University Consortium CIRAIG, peer-reviewed and published in the Journal of Cleaner Production in 2026. The mill says the results on Residual Ecosystem Quality, expressed as Potentially Disappeared Fraction, show MCashmere® can have an impact on biodiversity up to 686 times lower than virgin cashmere under the cut-off method.
Where the knitting happens
bobbin & tricot says its fibres are sorted, blended and spun by a specialist spinning partner, with each colour developed in the soft, natural hues that form the brand’s palette. Its pieces are knitted in Nepal by craftspeople using hand-operated flat knitting machines, each garment individually knitted, assembled and finished. Some travel on to the brand’s Paris atelier, where names, initials and words are embroidered by hand.
Lanaioli makes the case for recovered fibre partly in logistics terms. The brand says cashmere comes from the fleece of the Hircus goat, native to the Kashmir region between India and Pakistan, and that each goat usually produces around 200 grams a year. Because the goat is now farmed far from the Italian companies that make knitwear, it says, the yarn travels long distances and generates additional CO2 emissions for each garment.
Those manufacturing details sit outside what the certificate covers, a distinction that matters for the fibre claims driving sustainable sweater trends: GRS addresses recycled content and chain of custody, not where a garment was knitted or how it was finished.
Lanaioli says recovering existing cashmere saves water, energy and transport fuel and reduces CO2 emissions compared with producing new fibre, and that this is why the Re.Verso™ chain measures its impact through LCA studies.
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