Leading brands progress upon cotton sustainability falls short

London - Even though an increasing number of international brands might have made the move from regular cotton to sustainable cotton, overall ‘big brand’ progress even now falls short in line with the annual Sustainable Cotton Ranking 2017. Published yearly by the Pesticide Actions Network (PAN) UK, Solidaridad and WWF, the statement assesses brands progress on reaching their targets to greatly help transform the cotton sector.

The 2017 total annual report assesses the performance of 75 of the largest-cotton using companies, up from 37 in 2016, and carries a number of the greatest emerging markets in Brazil, China, India and South Africa. Simply 8 of the 37 companies listed in last year’s sustainable cotton ranking demonstrated a positive advancement when it came to the uptake of considerably more sustainable cotton, their plans and traceability.

However this year, more companies took action to improve their sustainable cotton uptake, traceability and policy. The 2017 record shows that leading retailers such as for example H&M, Marks & Spencer and C&A have joined Ikea as the industry’s ‘frontrunners’ in this year’s position, although the entire uptake of sustainable natural cotton remains fairly low. The four cotton requirements taken into account in the annual ranking include The Better Cotton Initiative (BCI), Natural cotton Manufactured in Africa, Fairtrade cotton and Organic and natural cotton.

The five companies who are paving just how for sustainable cotton uptake by setting fixed targets and attempting to achieve them are Ikea, Tchibo, C&A, M&S and H&M, who scored 50 to 100 points in the sustainable cotton ranking. Ikea tops the list with a rating of 76.7 points, receiving 18 points for its sustainable cotton policy, 48.7 for its uptake and 10 for traceability. Tchibo comes in second place with a complete of 60.3 points followed by the C&A Group with 59 things, Marks & Spencer with 57.2 factors and H&M with 54.8 points.

"We are very happy to have been highlighted among the top performing makes in the Sustainable Cotton Rank 2017," said Anna Gedda, Brain of Sustainability at H&M group to FashionUnited. "We hope that our sustainability way and goals can press the development for your industry and that we can inspire other brands to check out. We will gradually improve the share of sustainable natural cotton and our goal is to use only sustainably sourced cotton by 2020."

Another eight companies, including Adidas, Nike, Levi’s and VF Corp, are ranked aswell along the way, scoring 25 to 50 points.18 added companies, including Inditex, Gap, Esprit, scored a mere 5 to 25 items and the rest of the 44 companies, which include online giant Amazon, Max Mara and Walmart have scored less than 5 tips. Proportionately more businesses have made sourcing commitments compared to 2016, but the report discovered that only 11 firms have produced time-bound targets to sourced 100 percent sustainable natural cotton by 2020, or earlier.

Uptake of sustainable natural cotton by leading brands happening too slowly

“There is no reason why all large companies can’t match C&A, H&M, M&S, Tchibo GmbH and Ikea on cotton sustainability”, argued Richard Holland, WWF International. “There is now plenty of information, experience and advice about sourcing more sustainable cotton obtainable through credible programmes including the Better Natural cotton Initiative (BCI).” From the 25 companies assessed both found in 2016 and 2017, 18 improved their performance, with most of them raising their sourcing of extra sustainable cotton.

The most notable five companies from 2016 (Ikea, C&A, H&M, Adidas and Nike) all increased uptake as a share of total volumes, using approximately 20 percent more sustainable cotton in 2017, with C&A almost doubling its scores from 2016 to 2017. Furthermore, the annual ranking discovered that 13 companies also drastically strengthened their policies in 2017 in comparison to 2016, with Gap, Ikea and M&S making the biggest advances.

"Uptake of more sustainable natural cotton is our best potential for protecting worker well being and the environment from pesticide pollution”, added Keith Tyrell, Executive Director, Pesticides Actions Network UK. “Despite overall policy improvement, it’s disappointing that none of the firms have adopted policies to totally eliminate highly dangerous pesticides (HHPs) in the cultivation of the cotton they work with."

Nine firms also improved their traceability found in the 2017 ranking, with Marks & Spencer, C&A good and H&M all expanding their consumer lists of suppliers. But these results still fall short of bringing around industry change, warns Solidaridad, WWF and PAN UK. “Community commitments by CEOs to sourcing will be critical to sector change and making sustainable cotton typical", said Isabelle Roger, Global Natural cotton Programme Manager, Solidaridad.

Cotton is used in a huge selection of everyday things, from t-shirts, to bed linens and more, so that it is a vital income crop for 100 million households in 80 countries. Conventional natural cotton production has been associated with environmental, social and financial problems such as excessive water and pesticide make use of, child labour and farmer credit debt.

In the gross annual sustainable cotton ranking, posted on a dedicated website, PAN UK, Solidaridad and WWF are calling on all companies using large volumes of cotton to set time-bound targets to source completely sustainable cotton by 2020, progressively increase the volumes of considerably more sustainable cotton used in their products, and article publicly on progress to stakeholders.