Better Cotton, the world’s largest cotton sustainability effort, has signed a sustainability promise with the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) ahead of the introduction of its traceability solution at the end of 2023.
The sustainability pledge is an open-source set of policy suggestions, rules, and standards that allow industry actors to validate their claims about sustainability. The pledge’s goal is to establish a community of practice that will work together to enhance traceability and transparency as major facilitators of sustainability and circularity.
The UNECE established the framework to bring together trustworthy solution providers for knowledge sharing, believing that by engaging in open dialogue, corporations, academia, and subject matter experts can collaboratively promote supply chain transparency.
The promise stands to help governments, businesses, employees, and consumers alike by identifying genuine methods and programs aimed at advancing industry traceability.
“We are signing UNECE’s sustainability pledge not only to affirm our commitment to improving traceability and transparency in Better Cotton supply chains but also to support traceability and the use of more credible sustainability claims across the industry,” said Alia Malik, Better Cotton’s senior director of data and traceability.
“Once we know the provenance of the clothes we buy and the path they have taken in global value chains, we can make informed consumer decisions about the sustainability claims of those goods.”
We applaud Better Cotton’s promise and encourage additional stakeholders to join to make traceability and sustainability the new normal in the textile sector.” UNECE’s director of economic cooperation and trade, Elisabeth Türk, stated.
Better Cotton joins more than 90 companies who have signed the commitment, including Inditex, Vivienne Westwood, WWF, Retraced, and FibreTrace.
Better Cotton’s application takes into consideration the development of its traceability solution, which was created as part of the company’s 2030 Strategy. Better Cotton, with over 2,500 members worldwide, is ideally positioned to build a solution that can be expanded internationally.
It will allow retailers and brand members to authenticate the place of origin of the physical Better Cotton in their goods, while still allowing farmers and suppliers to continue accessing increasingly regulated worldwide value chains. All of this will contribute to Better Cotton’s efforts to enhance lives and protect livelihoods in cotton agricultural communities.
Better Cotton’s traceability solution was developed in collaboration with over 1,500 stakeholders, including suppliers, members, and industry experts.
Better Cotton signed the sustainability promise, outlining important measures and a timetable for launching the solution. Following a gradual roll-out, all supply chain actors will have the chance to conform to the new chain of custody criteria that will enable traceability before 2025.
The fashion and textile industries are under increased regulatory scrutiny, notably about ‘greenwashing,’ which is the use of unproven claims to mislead customers about a company’s or product’s sustainable credentials.
Better Cotton’s soon-to-be-launched traceability system will verify provenance and chronicle the lifetime of cotton, beginning at the national level and aiming to increase data granularity in the future.
