Sustainable Cotton Report

Today the Sustainable Cotton Report I have been working on for Rank A Brand has been released. The report is independent and has been co-created with WWF, Solidaridad and Pan UK.

It compares big cotton retailers and manufacturers on their sustainable cotton policies, actual uptake and traceability of this, including their publicly available communication about it.

Results show that just 8 out of 37 companies assessed address sustainability issues associated with cotton growing.

While this seems little, the worldwide production of more sustainable cotton has actually never been higher, reaching 8% of the total global cotton supply in 2014. A curious addition to that fact though, is that less than a fifth of this amount is actually being used as more sustainable cotton in products. The rest is hence being sold as conventional cotton due to lack of demand from top brands and companies. In these cases, a lack of transparency about that by brands and companies is a real waste of marketing potential, as they could actually engage potential customers by communicating about their sustainable cotton use.

A graphic from last year's report: this year's sustainable cotton uptake is estimated at 80%.

The research furthermore shows that the companies assessed pay most of their reporting attention sustainable cotton policies and less so to actual uptake and traceability of sustainable cotton. In general though, transparent reporting is limited which slows sector improvement.

In order to reduce the negative social and environmental impacts of cotton growing, and the risks these pose to their business, companies wanting postive change could consider the following actions that are used by companies which received the highest scores in this research:

• Adopt policies on overall cotton sustainability, and specifically on the key topics of HHPs, sourcing, water, labour conditions and recycling;

• Map their cotton supply chains down to country of origin of cotton (i.e. in an appealing infographic);

• Calculate their volume of cotton used annually: such a baseline study gives you insight in your status quo and in where you can easiliy adapt to more efficiency & sustainable practices;

• Set a target for sustainable cotton sourcing by a 5-10 years from now, including the exact percentages of Better Cotton, organic, Fairtrade, CmiA and recycled cotton;

• Develop a company-wide plan for meeting the target, including all brands in the company and all relevant departments – not just CSR or sustainability staff;

• Join organizations such as the Better Cotton Initiative (BCI) and/or Textile Exchange;

• Seek advice from consultants, standards organizations or NGOs.

See the graphic below for detailed results of this research by brand. To read the entire report, click this link.