Is BCI Cotton Really Better?

While many eyes were looking at the forest loss in the Amazon rainforest, another great loss was continuing unnoticed in the Cerrado, South America’s largest savanna. The NGO Earthsight ran a year-long investigation into the deforestation in this other great Brazilian biome. The Cerrado is home to 5% of the planet’s animals and plants, according to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).

The Earthsight Fashion Crimes Report states that in 2023 the rates of deforestation increased by 43% compared to 2022. The biggest culprit here is the cotton industry. Brazil is the world’s second-largest cotton producer & exporter, with exports doubling in the last decade. Most of this cotton is being cultivated in the Cerrado. 

Better Cotton in Brazil

Since its launch, the Better Cotton label has become somewhat of a symbol of caring for the environment in cotton production as used by the many fast fashion retailers. Previously known as the Better Cotton Initiative (BCI), the scheme was created in Switzerland almost 20 years ago.

In the last few years, Better Cotton has been criticized several times for its shortcomings like a lack of transparency in the supply chain, greenwashing and environmental abuses in the cotton supply chain. This investigation report shows that despite its certification, cotton linked to land rights and environmental abuses in places like Bahia, Brazil, has been found to carry the Better Cotton label.

On the Better Cotton website, you can find more information about how the organization operates in Brazil. The Responsible Brazilian Cotton (ABR) program is run by the National Brazilian Cotton Producers’ Association (Abrapa). They operate under a benchmarking agreement with Better Cotton, which means BC and Abrapa ABR are granted as a single certification to Brazilian cotton farmers, which forms a huge conflict of interest.

The shocking discovery that cotton linked by the Earthsight investigation to land rights and environmental abuses in Bahia is Better Cotton-certified is yet another demonstration of the shortcomings of BC.

The BC’s standards lack requirements for producers to demonstrate legal rights over the land under cultivation or to address land ownership disputes. Additionally, the compliance system within BC is deemed inadequate, with loopholes that allow for questionable practices to go unchecked. The certification process does not effectively trace the origin of cotton back to individual farms, leading to a lack of transparency in the supply chain. BC is being accused of greenwashing and failing to ensure full traceability and compliance with local laws, raising concerns about the credibility of its certification process.

The problem lies not within compliance with the Better Cotton standards, but rather with the standard itself: ​“There is no requirement for a producer to demonstrate that it holds legal rights over the land under cultivation: that the land was not ​‘grabbed’. There is no ban on growing BC cotton on land illegally cleared of forest before it was certified, and therefore no checks as to whether that might be the case. In fact the standard includes no requirements at all for individual certified farms to comply with relevant laws on land rights or environmental protection”

The Role of Fast-Fashion Giants

Now what is the role of fast-fashion companies in this? Were they aware of the issues, could they have been? 

As the executive summary of the Earthsight report states: ​“H&M and Zara do not buy this cotton (meaning: exported by Brazil) directly. Like most Western fashion giants, they source their clothes largely from suppliers based in Asia. These companies transform raw cotton into the finished goods we find at clothing shops. By trawling through thousands of shipment records, our investigators found that H&M and Zara’s suppliers source cotton grown in the western portion of the Brazilian state of Bahia by two of the country’s largest producers: SLC Agrícola and Grupo Horita (Horita Group).

SLC and Horita’s cotton production in western Bahia – a part of the Cerrado biome that has been heavily impacted by industrial-scale agribusiness – is linked to a number of illegalities.

SLC Agrícola – with 44,000ha of cotton plantations (equivalent to over 60,000 football pitches) in western Bahia alone – is Brazil’s largest cotton producer while Horita – which operates on at least 140,000ha of farmland in the region – is one of the top six. They are both owned by families believed to be among Brazil’s wealthiest.”

This shows another issue in the fast-fashion industry, the absolute lack of transparency within these complex supply chains leads to a ​‘free pass’ for exploitation of workers, environments and other illegal practices. This complexity forms a collective trap for the whole industry. Even if a brand would want to ensure slavery-free and environmentally sustainable production practices, they often don’t even know their own supply chain fully, let allone trust the certificates their suppliers are providing. The complexity and lack of transparency throughout makes it easier for these terrible practices to go unnoticed.

Nevertheless, big companies like H&M and Zara certainly have the means to invest in a more environmentally friendly, slavery-free and transparent supply chain!
​“H&M and Inditex currently lack the policies and tools to make up for BC’s shortcomings. H&M’s human rights and sustainability policies fail to address communities’ rights or deforestation. Inditex’s environmental commitments do not seem to extend to its cotton suppliers. Better Cotton and all the companies mentioned in the report were contacted for comment. The responses can be found throughout the report and accessed in full here.” (Source: Earthsight executive summary)

The report focuses on brands that are a part of the Inditex group, namely Zara, but also H&M and it is noteworthy to mention that many more fast-fashion brands use BC cotton, for example C&A, Carhartt and Scotch&Soda. We hope that these brands will take this report as a warning sign to investigate their supply chain.

Further in the report we read: ​“H&M and Inditex stated they had shared Earthsight’s findings with Better Cotton, which had launched an investigation as a result. Better Cotton said it had asked Abrapa to investigate our findings since the farms in question had been certified by the Brazilian association. It stated that initial findings submitted to it by Abrapa had ​“not identified any non-compliance issues.” No evidence was provided to substantiate this conclusion.

Still, Better Cotton indicated it had ​“made the assessment that further research is required […] in order to better understand the risks present in the region and what they could mean for credible implementation of the Standard.” Accordingly, it said it will ​“contract an independent auditor to run enhanced verification visits focusing on areas of risk highlighted in the report,” with the aim of having an assessment completed within 12 weeks.”

While it’s great that Inditex is putting pressure on Better Cotton to improve the standards, big companies like Inditex also need to take responsibility and thoroughly check their supply chain. By pointing the finger at Better Cotton, the global fashion giant hopes to evade their part of the blame, but the truth is that they could have taken action years ago when organisations e.g. like ourselves following the research of Veronica Bates Kassatly and Apparel Insider first came out and exposed the BCI scheme back in 2019.

In the complexity of the issue and the industry as a whole, there are a lot of victims like the Cerrado ecosystem and local communities. But there are also many actors to blame, as there are numerous loophole-filled systems like this still in place. While this report can come as a shock to some, we at COSH! are thrilled to see investigations like this bringing scandals to light, because knowing is the first step to make improvements!

Want to know more about the advantages of organic cotton? Read our previous article here.

Or discover more about the organic cotton integrity crisis.

Find the full Earthsight Report here, or read the executive summary here.