Sustainability in Cotton: Transparency Needs to Extend to Raw Materials

Cotton has a lot of work to do before it achieves a general balance – often referred to as “sustainability” – and to do it, we need everyone in the textile chain to help.

Today’s world is characterized by the fear of consumption and over-exploitation of the environment, and of our growing social differences. The dangers hang over us like the sword of Damocles.

Why, then, has society not already collapsed? Because we think and are innovative.

The vast majority of cotton is now produced responsibly, based on long-term land use and resource-saving production. But if we look at the end of the supply chain, there is also an important question: Why does the end consumer buy an item? What makes him decide to spend money on textiles?

In a global survey by Cotton Incorporated, consumers rated environmental friendliness in just 4th place at the point of sale. However, the industry should ensure that sustainability is never simply a marketing tool; environmental protection and saving resources are common sense.

Forty-one percent of global consumers say they would hold manufacturers primarily responsible for clothing that is not environmentally-friendly, followed by the brand (15 %) and themselves (13 %). However, the financial risk lies predominantly with the brand or retailer because they sit on the textile stocks and ignorance about sources and conditions is no excuse. This underlines the need for transparency in the textile business today, right through to the raw material.

The production chain is immensely complex, but as producers of raw cotton, we are very aware of these future needs. Consumers want to trust their retailer/brand without thinking about sustainability. Retailers and brands would like to trust their suppliers because they take the risk. Each and every member of the supply chain must be able to trust their supplier.

Responsible Industry Behavior

To achieve this confidence, we need to work on the instruments we have, and a good one is traceability. Already, an ID system makes each U.S. and Australian cotton bale traceable, while research projects are working on DNA- based cotton analysis. Such instruments will be crucial for any kind of cotton production in providing the transparency everyone is talking about. With too many labels on the market, using one that cannot be tracked does not make sense.

As traceability becomes increasingly important, it is essential that we are in this process from the start and are able to produce both traceable and responsibly produced cotton and/or textile products. We must ask ourselves: What comes from where? And we must be able to give an answer.

Many questions remain. For example, what is the most efficient way to create transparency and traceability, and how far down the textile chain should it go? Must we trace cotton back to the farmer? Is it recommendable to trace the production of synthetic fibres to their source? What impact will better transparency and traceability have on producing countries and consumer behaviour? Who will pay the extra costs? Should we look at the cost/benefit ratio on each level? There might be no perfect answer at the moment, but we must all consider the issue as highly relevant in the future.