After three years of development, the Traceable Better Cotton solution is supposed to provide a thorough understanding of cotton’s path across the supply chain by recording stakeholder input on the Better Cotton Platform.
In order to develop this solution, Better Cotton collaborated closely with a group of member brands and retailers that included H&M Group, Marks & Spencer (M&S), Walmart, Target, Bestseller, Gap Inc., and C&A.
The goal is to give brands and merchants the assurance to acquire goods from particular nations while obtaining improved supply chain visibility to aid in their due diligence efforts.
“Since 2021, we have been proud partners working with Better Cotton to improve the traceability of cotton and we’re delighted to be able to be part of this first-of-its-kind solution which will enable us to track our cotton at scale along the supply chain,” says Katharine Beacham, head of materials and sustainability at M&S.
In the coming years Better Cotton hopes to expand the availability and granularity of its traceable Better Cotton to:
- Serve as the foundation for an “Impact Marketplace,” which will compensate cotton farmers for their contributions to field-level progress
- Enable Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs) at the country level to quantify the environmental impact of Better Cotton compared to conventional cotton
- Provide credible consumer and business-facing claims.
The cotton organisation notes that “Traceable Better Cotton” is defined as the physical Better Cotton within a cotton-containing product that has been tracked throughout the supply chain.
