Cotton is a product primarily used in the fashion industry and is used for making general clothing as well as other products in the apparel industry. The demand and the importance of this product has remained stable for years with highest production volumes from India (5,879 thousand metric tons), China, United States, Pakistan, Brazil and Australia. In most of these countries, there could be high probabilities of identifying Social and Environmental Hotspots related to the agricultural and manufacturing processes for producing cotton fibers and fabrics. Social concerns on e.g. forced labor, minimum wages, gender discrimination, have been raised by the media and the scientific society. Environmental issues, such as water scarcity and land use, are also often mentioned in the same context.
Lots of initiatives have been developed in the last years to improve the sustainability performance of Cotton at company level. Two main examples are the International Cotton Advisory Committee and the Better Cotton Initiative. The latter focused its attention on the environmental performance, by considering impacts such as climate change and land use. The first was founded in 1939, yet, the decision to create an Expert Panel on Social, Environmental and Economic Performance of Cotton (SEEP) was agreed on the 65th Plenary Meeting in Brazil, in September 2006. A main driver for the development was the perception that agricultural production, including cotton production, can cause degradation of soil and water and exposure of workers to harmful chemicals. The SEEP in 2009 produced the first guideline “Measuring Sustainability in Cotton Farming Systems - Towards a Guidance Framework”. In this document the three pillars of sustainability are considered, defining a set of indicators to measure the performance of small cotton farmers. Furthermore, it represents a first solid report on the state of the art on the sustainability performance of cotton farming. What it is still missing in the SEEP approach is a life cycle prospective that should be taken in to account.
Many more initiatives have been set up in the last years in this sector and most of them consider both environmental and social impacts and included farmers and companies in the supply chain of the final products (e.g. clothing). Although this product has already attracted much attention from the government and NGOs and some effort has been made to develop a consistent and harmonized methodology to measure its associated sustainability performance, no agreement at scientific and operational level has yet been reached.
Therefore, the aim of this study is to develop a state of the art on the main indicators, data, databases, impact categories with a life cycle prospecting and targeting the standardization of life cycle sustainability assessment for the cotton industry. The combination of environmental, social and economic aspects as well as the consideration of positive and negative impacts is hereby of importance. Benefits and challenges of this methodology will be presented here together with steps for further developments.
This developed set of indicators on sustainability aspects of cotton can then serve to push towards harmonization in assessing cotton production and products and will provide a clear picture on country-specific hotspots enabling a comparison of the different production locations.
Key words: cotton, sustainability indicators, life cycle assessment, life cycle sustainability assessment.
5d. Value chains & trade
