Major retailers jointly set standard for suppliers on sustainable cotton
IKEA, M&S, H&M and Levi's in Colombo (Sri Lanka) discussed in February with their major suppliers from Bangladesh, India, China and Pakistan how to integrate Better Cotton standards into their supply chains. 'This seminar is an important first step in communicating the details of Better Cotton to our South Asian supply chain partners’, says Sean Cady, Director Environmental, Health & Safety, Levi Strauss & Co: We are proud to be among the brands sharing our passion for this project and creating a shared commitment to making cotton agriculture more sustainable.'
Retailers and brands often call for meeting with their suppliers to deal with technical details and quality. This meeting the four brands and retailers had another message for their Asian suppliers saying that sustainable (BCI) cotton is the future. The meeting was attended by over 200 suppliers from Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and China, the most important cotton producing countries in the world producing over 60% of total world production of cotton.
Significant quantities of Better Cotton in 2010
Sean Cady of Levi’s: 'We are strongly committed to a partnership approach with IDH in which all players in the cotton supply chain are working together to create a long-term supply of Better Cotton. We're already working on follow up steps, which include supporting the harvest of significant quantities of Better Cotton in 2010 and working to integrate Better Cotton into our supply chain.'
Important target of the program is to produce around 1 million tons of sustainable cotton per year. Expectations are that once that amount is reached – on a total of 30 M tons worldwide – that will be sufficient to create a real market for sustainable cotton. The program is scheduled to start in India and Pakistan this year, and China, West-Africa and Brazil in later years.
Read more about the IDH cotton programme.
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