Better Cotton is the world’s leading sustainability initiative for cotton. Our mission is to help cotton communities survive and thrive, while protecting and restoring the environment.
In just over 10 years we have become the world’s largest cotton sustainability programme. Our mission: to help cotton communities survive and thrive, while protecting and restoring the environment.
Better Cotton is grown in 22 countries around the world and accounts for 22% of global cotton production. In the 2022-23 cotton season, 2.13 million licensed Better Cotton Farmers grew 5.47 million tonnes of Better Cotton.
Today Better Cotton has more than 2,700 members, reflecting the breadth and diversity of the industry. Members of a global community that understands the mutual benefits of sustainable cotton farming. The moment you join, you become part of this too.
The founding premise of Better Cotton is that a healthy sustainable future for cotton and the people that farm it is in the interests of everyone connected with it.
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Photo credit: Cotton Australia. Location: Narrabri, Australia, 2023. Description: Picker in action at Camp Cotton 2023.
Better Cotton has announced the renewal of its Strategic Partnership with Cotton Australia, the official body for Australia’s cotton growers, until 2027.
The agreement provides the framework for continued collaboration and ensures the organisations remain aligned in their efforts to champion more sustainably produced cotton.
Since 2014, Cotton Australia’s ‘my Best Management Practice’ (myBMP) Standard has been recognised as equivalent to the Better Cotton Standard System (BCSS), enabling Australian farmers to sell their cotton as ‘Better Cotton’ in international markets.
In the 2023/24 cotton season, licensed farmers produced more than 400,000 metric tonnes (MT) of Better Cotton, representing 40% of the country’s total cotton production.
The Australian cotton industry provides employment for more than 10,000 people and generates over AU$3.5 billion per year in export earnings, according to Cotton Australia.
Following Cotton Australia’s success in aligning its field-level requirements with Better Cotton’s updated Principles & Criteria (P&C) v.3.0, the revised myBMP Standard will be fully implemented by the 2025/26 season.
Better Cotton requires Strategic Partners to periodically reassess and, where necessary, realign their standards with the BCSS to maintain standard equivalence. This ensures that both standards evolve to continually support cotton farmers in meeting the market demand of more sustainable cotton.
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Do you want to know what the largest cotton sustainability programme in the world is up to? Keep up to date with the latest developments and hear from BCI Farmers, Partners and Members in the new BCI Quarterly Newsletter. BCI Members also receive a Monthly Member Update.
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These updates are intended to reflect changes to the Better Cotton Platform’s default sharing settings and data use in our Audit management system.
You don’t need to do anything to accept these changes – they’re effective from today, 2 April 2025.
You can read the full text by visiting our Data Privacy Policy page.
