This article first appeared in our Organic September 2024 issue of My Green Pod Magazine. Click here to subscribe to our digital edition and get each issue delivered straight to your inbox
News stories earlier this year shared reports linking H&M and Zara’s cotton to illegal deforestation and stolen land in Brazil.
The frightening part is that this cotton was actually verified ‘Sustainable’ by the industry’s largest cotton certification scheme: Better Cotton.
The purpose of this organisation is to certify the supply chain from an ethical standpoint.
Better Cotton Initiative (BCI) was founded in 2005 when a group of ‘visionary’ (their words, not ours) partners came together to form a non-profit governance group that would provide a practical solution for cotton farming and practices.
Earthsight spent a year investigating and tracking cotton from the Cerrado region in the state of Bahia, Brazil to the high-street and online giants Zara and H&M.
These brands have made use of clever marketing tactics for years, but in this case the greenwashing had already been done – by Better Cotton.
Its logo is the sign many shoppers seek prior to purchase to ensure their morals and ethics have been satisfied, because the hoops have all been jumped through.
Rather obviously we all threw our hands up and looked at each other – like, how?
We’re talking about an industry body we were supposed to trust – not an in-house ‘don’t worry we looked and everything is cushty’, but an independent verifier.
Naturally we looked a little deeper; we discovered BCI was initiated at a roundtable by the World Wildlife Fund, and it didn’t take long for controversy and criticism to follow.
BCI began operating projects around 2010 and as early as 2014, people were questioning whether ‘better’ was good enough.
The word ‘organic’ brings (sometimes perhaps inaccurately) connotations of ethical and fair, but this promise was absent.
In 2017 a French broadcaster and journalist raised concerns about how Better Cotton was just providing greenwashing solutions to producers who systematically resort to exploiting children in their supply chain.
Allegations of modern slavery joined accusations of wasteful irrigation and the use of harmful pesticides.
In 2021, BCI again found itself in the midst of controversy when its cotton from China was linked to a flurry of forced labour allegations in the Xinjiang region.
BCI was eventually forced to pull out of the area, which then led to multiple boycotts of the brands it supplies.
H&M and Inditex could be called founding partners of BCI; they remain Better Cotton’s biggest customers today, which leads us down a dark hole of power dynamics.
When your biggest customers are creating unprecedented demand, you have to keep up.
But where does this leave us? Do we need an independent body to vet the independent bodies?
Organic cotton has been the stalwart of what is considered a sustainable product ever since the words ‘sustainable’ and ‘fashion’ were united.
In fact, organic cotton has been responsible for a large section of the industry’s work and credibility. But with Better Cotton falling into disrepute, what happens next?
Kiss The Ground cotton has an even better approach. The organisation is on a mission to awaken people to the possibilities of regeneration, and the benefits of rebuilding healthy soil.
Regenerative farming is creating a new wave in the industry, supporting farmers to switch, subsidising costs and providing a product worthy of a certificate.
Regenerative agriculture isn’t just driven by how the fashion industry cultivates cotton, either; it connects everything environmentally.
Citizens of Humanity was pivotal in the movement; it used regenerative cotton for its products, with a particular focus on denim.
‘Organic’ may no longer be enough in the fashion industry; what we need now is a divorce from the large industry players. We need to move to new ways that make the whole environment better, rather than just less bad.
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