Better Cotton Initiative – Independent Assessment Services

Better Cotton is the world’s leading sustainability initiative for cotton. Their mission is to help cotton communities survive and grow, while protecting and restoring our environment. In just over 10 years they have turned into the world’s largest cotton sustainability programme.

Better Cotton is better for:

• farm workers, as they can benefit from better working conditions and a higher standard of living,
• retailers and brands, as they can be sure that the cotton they use is better for people and the planet,
• consumers, as they can trust that the brands they are buying share their values.

For a commodity, like BCI, transparency and traceability are crucial. Traceability makes it possible to trace the produced Better Cotton back to its country of origin using the Better Cotton Platform (BCP). Traceability also enables better investments to the field level to support farmers in driving sustainability improvements and increasing their yields.

Our partnership with the Better Cotton Initiative means that we're helping to train farmers in sustainable practices, with a quarter of the world's cotton now produced under the Better Cotton Standard. As an accredited third-party verifier, we can provide you with two crucial independent assessments to comply with BCI requirements:

• Independent Assessment: Brand and Retailer Verification
• 3rd Party Verifier (3PV): Chain of Custody Audit

Being a member of Better Cotton enables retailers and brands to encourage farmers’ capacity to adopt more sustainable practices, which will result in improved lives and livelihoods. Applicants must submit their annual cotton lint consumption along with the BCI application form. For BCI Retailers and Brand (RB) members, independent, third-party assessment of RB members’ annual cotton fibre consumption measurements is mandatory from January 2024.

Requirement and frequency for independent assessment depends on the membership size category of each member: very large, large and medium category partners must submit an independent assessment every year, while small companies every other year. Currently very small size category members are not required to submit an independent assessment.

TÜV Rheinland, as a third-party independent assessor, can provide the necessary conformity assessment document which needs to be submitted along with the BCI submission form. TÜV Rheinland can help to make sure your RB members’ calculations are consistent and creditable.

Increasing demand for supply chain visibility has created a need for traceable Better Cotton. The foundation of the traceability solution is set by the Chain of Custody Standard. The Chain of Custody is the custodial sequence that occurs as ownership or control of the material supply is transferred from one custodian to another in the supply chain.

From the farmers who grow Better Cotton to the companies that source it, the Better Cotton Chain of Custody (CoC) is the documentation and evidence of Better Cotton as it moves through the supply chain, connecting Better Cotton supply with demand.

The CoC Standard allow organisations to perform one or a combination of four different CoC Models, enabling the sourcing of two types of Better Cotton – Mass Balance and Physical/Traceable Better Cotton. Mass Balance and Physical/Traceable CoC Models have different requirements for how Better Cotton is stored, transported, and processed within the supply chain.

• Mass Balance is a volume-tracking model that allows Better Cotton to be substituted or mixed with conventional cotton by traders or spinners along the supply chain while granting that the amount of Better Cotton sold never exceeds the amount of Better Cotton purchased.
• Segregation (single country) requires the separation of Physical/Traceable Better Cotton and conventional cotton from the farm level onwards throughout the supply chain. It forbids the mixing or substitution between Physical/Traceable Better Cotton of different origins and conventional cotton of any origin.
• The Controlled Blending model allows the mixing of Physical/Traceable Better Cotton and conventional cotton within a production batch, resulting in a percentage claim about the proportion of physical Better Cotton used within the batch. This model can only be used within a manufacturing or processing activity from a spinning mill onwards.

• With more than 150 years of experience in testing, inspection and certification, we are a longstanding respected and recognized company serving major brands around the world.
• Our highly experienced experts have practical knowledge of the entire product development lifecycle in addition to the tests, and certification requirements.
• Our team of qualified experts located worldwide provides clarity on regulations specific to your product and simplify the testing process for multi-market access needs.
• Our worldwide network of accredited laboratories offers our customers access to an extensive range of services with additional support in key manufacturing and destination markets.