Better Cotton, the world’s largest cotton sustainability program, is testing digital and physical traceability solutions from Retraced, TextileGenesis, Haelixa and Tailorlux in India. The program wants to find out how transparency in the cotton supply chains can best be increased.
There are over a million Better Cotton farmers in India and the country is one of the largest producers of Better Cotton in the world. However, domestic supply chains are among the most complex in the world, says Better Cotton, and are much more fragmented than in other regions. “Until now, it has been difficult to get a holistic view of traceability in the supply chain,” writes the Better Cotton Initiative in a press release. “The new traceability system will align with, and eventually surpass, existing traceability solutions to provide full end-to-end visibility.”
Pilot project in cooperation with fashion retailers
Under the project, which is being carried out in partnership with companies including C&A, Marks & Spencer, Target and Walmart, each technology will track cotton as it moves through the supply chains of participating brands and retailers.
Both digital and physical traceability solutions will be deployed in individual cotton supply chains to assess their performance, with the results expected to inform the scaled alignment of Better Cotton’s traceability program.
Digital traceability is provided by leading platforms such as Retraced and TextileGenesis. Better Cotton is also testing two additional traceability systems, Haelixa and Tailorlux, to determine the potential of each solution.
With physical traceability, Better Cotton aims to be able to verify the provenance of certified materials with greater accuracy. This pilot program will expand on Better Cotton’s previous concept, which includes the concept of mass balance – a widely used quantity tracking system. Thanks to mass balance, Better Cotton can be substituted for or blended with conventional cotton by merchants or spinners along the supply chain, while ensuring that the amount of Better Cotton sold never exceeds the amount of Better Cotton produced.