As it prepares to launch its Traceability Solution at the end of this year, Better Cotton has taken another step toward strengthening its 2030 Strategy for improving conditions in the worldwide cotton industry by signing the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) Sustainability Pledge.
Signing the document, Better Cotton joins about 90 businesses pledging to support UNECE’s premise that companies, academics and experts in the sector can advance supply chain transparency through dialogue. The goal of the pledge is to bring together companies focused on transparency and traceability and provide them with specific, targeted tools and projects that will benefit policymakers, companies, workers and consumers.
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According to Alia Malik, Better Cotton’s senior director of data and traceability, signing the pledge is an important endorsement of the industry’s goal of transparency and its move toward circularity.
“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 in support of traceability and the use of more credible sustainability claims across the country,” she said.
The Traceability Solution will eventually identify any cotton’s country origin and trace its lifecycle, while improving information as the system gets established. It will help people in the cotton industry manage increasing regulatory pressure, particularly involving “greenwashing,” overstating or misrepresenting company data or a product’s sustainability bona fides.
Elisabeth Türk, director of economic cooperation and trade at the UNECE, said this fact was key to the successful transformation of the industry into one of accountability.
“Once we know the provenance of the clothes that we buy and the path they have travelled in global value chains, then we can make informed decisions as consumers about the sustainability claims of those goods,” she said. “We welcome Better Cotton’s pledge and call on other players to join and make traceability and sustainability the new normal in the textile industry.”
Better Cotton is the world’s largest pro-cotton-sustainability organization, with 2,500 members worldwide. It has the critical mass to develop a solution to the traceability issue that could be scaled globally.
Its Traceability Solution was formulated on extensive discussions with more than 1,500 stakeholders among its suppliers, members and industry consultants.
Getting on board with the UNECE Sustainability Pledge, Better Cotton now has outlined key actions and a schedule for launching its traceability initiative. The coming phased rollout will enable every company in the supply chain to get in line with the new chain of custody requirements to jump start traceability before 2025.
Other companies that have signed the UNECE Sustainability Pledge include WWF, Vivienne Westwood, Inditex, Retraced and FibreTrace.
In other related initiatives, the UNECE has been working with the United Nations Centre for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business (UN/CEFACT) to develop policy recommendations, implementation guidelines and a traceability call to action. They have also come up with a toolbox that includes blockchain and DNA tracing solutions that have already been implemented in several textile supply chains.
