You’ve Got the Receipts. But Who Says They’re Real? 

From Practice to Proof: The OneThread Learning Series | Module 5 

One of my favourite things on Instagram is when somebody leaves a comment questioning how a brand makes something, and the brand responds with an entire video showing the process. 

Someone says, “You don’t actually make your own dyes,” and the next thing you know, there’s a video of somebody preparing the ingredients, mixing the colours, dyeing the fabric and showing you exactly how they do it. Sometimes they’ll even take you through the entire production process, introduce the people involved and explain why they make things the way they do. 

I love those videos. There’s something incredibly satisfying about watching someone stand behind their work, especially when they’ve clearly put years of thought, skill and effort into developing it. 

Now imagine that same brand could go a little further. They could show you the policy they developed around their production practices, the records they’ve kept over the years and the evidence demonstrating that this isn’t something they started doing yesterday because somebody asked an uncomfortable question on Instagram. 

They could say, “We’ve been doing this for three years. Here’s how we do it, here’s how we’ve documented it, and here’s the work.” 

That’s the kind of confidence I want businesses to have when talking about sustainability. Not because I think every brand needs to spend its time defending itself on social media, but because I think there’s something powerful about being able to take pride in your work and demonstrate exactly what you’re proud of. 

And that brings us to verification. 

What Does It Actually Mean to Verify Something? 

Over the last four modules, we’ve worked through recognising sustainable practices, understanding claims, finding evidence and creating systems to preserve that evidence. By now, you should have a much better understanding of the information your business produces and how to make sure you can find it again. 

But having evidence and having a verified claim are not the same thing. 

Verification is essentially the process of checking whether something is true or meets a particular set of requirements. In sustainability, that means examining a claim and the information supporting it to determine whether the available evidence is credible, relevant and sufficient. 

I think people sometimes hear the word verification and imagine an intimidating process where someone arrives at their business looking for everything they’ve done wrong. But at its core, verification is simply somebody checking your work against a defined set of criteria. 

And if nobody has explained what that process involves, how would you know what to prepare? 

That’s part of why we’ve spent four modules getting here. I don’t want you to encounter verification for the first time when a buyer, auditor or certification body asks you for information you didn’t know you needed to keep. 

I want you to understand the process well enough to start preparing for it yourself. 

A Policy, a Log and Evidence Walk Into a Fashion Business 

Within OneThread, we look at three important components when helping brands substantiate their sustainability claims: policies, logs and evidence. 

They each do something different, and understanding how they work together is one of the most useful things you can learn about verification. 

Let’s imagine you run a small fashion business and you tell customers that you pay your garment workers fairly. 

That’s your claim. 

A policy establishes what your business has formally committed to doing. You might have a written payment policy explaining how rates are determined, when workers are paid and which standards your business commits to following. 

A log records what happens in practice. This might be a spreadsheet documenting who worked on which garments, how much work was completed, the agreed payment and when that payment was made. 

Your evidence supports the information in those records. This could include signed agreements, proofs of payment, time records or acknowledgements from the people who completed the work. 

Now, if I look at all three together, I can begin to understand much more about how your business operates. 

The policy tells me what you have committed to. The log helps me see whether that commitment is being carried out consistently. The evidence helps substantiate whether the recorded activities actually happened. 

But even with all three, we still need to examine what they establish. A payment record doesn’t automatically prove that a wage is fair. That depends on the applicable standard, the work involved and the surrounding circumstances. Someone verifying the claim may need to examine additional information or speak with the people involved. 

The documents support the claim. Verification evaluates whether that support is sufficient. 

This is also why having a beautiful policy document doesn’t automatically make your business sustainable. You can have a policy that nobody follows, just as you can have excellent practices that nobody has formally documented. 

In fact, this is something we deliberately examine in the OneThread Sustainability Assessment. We ask questions about both behaviour and structure because we want to understand not only what a business says it does, but also whether it has established the systems to support those practices. 

A business might have worked with the same group of seamstresses for ten years, paid them consistently and maintained strong working relationships without ever writing a formal labour policy. Another business might have a comprehensive labour policy but very little evidence that it is being followed. 

Those businesses have different gaps, and they need different kinds of support. 

Personally, I find it easier to work with a business that already has the practice but needs help documenting it. We can start with what they’re actually doing and build the appropriate structures around it. When the documentation exists but the practice doesn’t, the work involves changing how the business operates. 

Neither situation is something we need to approach with judgment. We just need to understand what exists and what still needs to happen. 

Verification and Certification Are Not the Same Thing 

Another thing worth understanding is the difference between verification and certification, because the terms are often used interchangeably even though they serve different purposes. 

Verification is a process of checking information or claims. Certification is formal recognition that specified requirements of a particular standard have been met. 

Certification usually involves an assessment process, which may include reviewing documents, examining evidence, conducting audits or other forms of verification. The exact requirements depend on the certification and the organisation issuing it. 

Take B Corp certification, for example. 

A company seeking B Corp certification needs to demonstrate that it meets the applicable requirements of the certification framework. That involves much more than simply telling someone that the company operates responsibly. 

Now imagine a brand has spent months gathering its documents, preparing for an assessment and receiving certification. That’s an achievement worth celebrating. 

But what happens afterwards? 

The business still needs to operate. People still need to be paid. Materials still need to be sourced. Policies may need updating, and records still need to be maintained. 

When reassessment or recertification comes around, the business shouldn’t have to reconstruct years of activity from memory. 

This is where ongoing evidence management becomes useful. Rather than treating certification as a project that begins when an application opens and ends when a certificate arrives, businesses can maintain the information supporting their practices as part of normal operations. 

OneThread doesn’t currently issue sustainability certifications. Our role is to help brands understand, organise and substantiate their practices, including maintaining the documentation and evidence that may support certification processes, buyer requirements and other forms of verification. 

And you don’t necessarily need to be pursuing a certification for that work to be valuable. 

A retailer, investor, customer or potential business partner might ask you to substantiate a claim without requiring you to hold a particular certificate. 

Your evidence should be useful beyond any single application. 

What If You Don’t Have a Policy? 

If you’re reading this thinking, Okay, but I don’t actually have a written policy for any of this, that’s fine. We’ve spent the last four modules talking about how businesses can have established practices without necessarily having the documentation to explain them. 

You don’t need to invent a policy from scratch, and you certainly don’t need to spend a fortune doing it. 

Our legal partner, LawyeredUp, offers subscription options for general business policies and legal documentation. If you’re looking for somewhere to start with your business’s legal documentation, they’re worth exploring. 

But if you’re unsure which sustainability policies are relevant to your fashion business, you can start with the OneThread Sustainability Assessment. 

Our assessment examines your business across ten sustainability pillars, looking at both the practices you already have and the structures supporting them. It helps identify gaps in your sustainability infrastructure, including areas where formal policies, records or supporting evidence may be needed. 

From there, OneThread can help you understand which policies are relevant to your operations and how to connect them to the practices, logs and evidence you’re already building. 

And remember, if you’ve been doing something for five years but only write the policy today, that’s okay. The policy should reflect when it was actually adopted. Your earlier records can help demonstrate the history of the practice. 

A policy should formalise your commitments, not manufacture a history you don’t have. 

Being Able to Stand on Business 

I want to come back to those Instagram videos for a moment. 

Because as much as I enjoy watching somebody respond to a comment by showing their entire production process, I think the most exciting part is what happens when that ability to demonstrate your work becomes normal. 

Imagine being able to confidently explain where your materials come from because you’ve maintained your supplier records. Or being able to show how your production practices have developed because you’ve kept your logs. Or being able to demonstrate that a commitment you’ve made publicly is something your business has been practising consistently. 

That doesn’t mean nobody will ever question you. It doesn’t mean your business will never make mistakes, and it certainly doesn’t mean that having documentation makes every claim automatically true. 

It means that when someone asks you to explain your work, you have something more substantial than your own assurances to offer. 

And I think that’s something to be excited about. 

We spend so much time talking about verification as though it’s something businesses should fear, when it can also be an opportunity to recognise the work they’ve already done and identify where they can strengthen it. 

You don’t have to claim that your business is perfect. You don’t have to pretend you have every policy, every document or every answer. In fact, understanding what you cannot yet substantiate is part of being able to communicate responsibly. 

What you can do is learn to distinguish between what you believe about your business, what you know about your business and what you can demonstrate to somebody else. 

This week, I want you to choose one sustainability claim from your first Claim Map and examine it using the Can You Stand Behind Your Claim? worksheet. 

Look at the policy supporting it, the logs recording the practice, and the evidence demonstrating what happened. Identify what is missing, what remains uncertain and what somebody independently examining the claim would still need to check. 

You are not being asked to certify yourself or declare your claim independently verified. You’re learning how to prepare information for that process and recognise what a credible claim needs. 

Because I want you to be proud of the work you’re doing. Not because you’ve collected enough paperwork to impress somebody, but because you’ve built something worth standing behind. 

There’s something incredibly satisfying about being able to say, “This is what we do. This is how we do it. This is how long we’ve been doing it. And here’s the work.” 

You’re not asking somebody to believe you simply because you said so. You’re allowing them to examine the information for themselves. 

That’s what I want verification to feel like. Not being caught out. Being able to stand on business. 

Continue Learning 

Module 5 Exercise — Can You Stand Behind Your Claim? 

Return to a claim you identified in Module 1 and examine the policy, logs and evidence that support it. Identify what you can currently substantiate, what remains uncertain and what an independent reviewer would need to check. 

Need help identifying your sustainability documentation gaps? Take the OneThread Sustainability Assessment to understand which practices and structures are already in place and where your business may need stronger documentation and verification infrastructure.