Tracing Cotton

It seems what I do for a living is hotting up in the commercial world. I saw this article yesterday and posted a comment on it.

http://www.ethicalcorp.com/content.asp?ContentID=5409&newsletter=24

Extract:

"Talk to anyone about cotton in Uzbekistan and the picture drawn is horrific. Forced child labour picks much of the country’s annual 800,000 tons of cotton exports – Uzbekistan is the second biggest cotton exporter in the world. Uzbekistan is one of the five countries that dominate the global cotton industry, the others being China, the US, India and Pakistan. Of the cotton produced in Uzbekistan, 43% is exported to Asia and 19% to Europe."

So how much are you wearing? Most brands have no idea whether their products contain it. That 43% us exported to Asia I expect means we are wearing a lot of it as that is where most of what we wear is made!

I left a comment on the article and was contacted by them this morning and told it couldn't be published as it was too much like advertising. The upshot though is we get a chance now to get a decent article about what we do published.

In the chat I had this morning several well known brands were mentioned as being known to have Uzbek cotton in their garments. The chances are they don't know it. There is no excuse though for this to be the case...

Have a look at https://mystring.info for a list of companies that have already published that they sell fully traceable products. These brands should source from them and know they are not encouraging the current bad practice in Uzbekistan.