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 2021-22 cotton season, 2.2 million licensed Better Cotton Farmers grew 5.4 million tonnes of Better Cotton.
Today Better Cotton has more than 2,500 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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The Better Cotton Conference is an annual opportunity to convene our global community of cotton stakeholders for two days of working together to address the challenges and opportunities in the future of sustainable cotton.
We’re especially excited this year to host the Better Cotton Conference 2024 in Türkiye – the seventh-largest cotton producer in the world, and home to a large domestic textile industry.
The conference will take place 26-27 June in Istanbul, at the Hilton Istanbul Bomonti Hotel & Conference Center. Istanbul is home to 19% of Türkiye’s population, the largest city in Türkiye and in Europe. It is uniquely positioned on the Bosphorus Strait, spanning both Europe and Asia, and conference attendees will enjoy a networking river cruise on the Bosphorus after our first day of the conference.
Türkiye has been cultivating cotton since the 6th century, and is known worldwide for its impressive textile industry. With our own Better Cotton history going back more than 12 years, it’s the perfect place to get inspired for a better future for our sector.
The first Turkish Better Cotton harvest took place in 2013. By the 2021-22 season, production had reached over 67,000 tonnes, mainly focused in the Aegean Region, Cukurova and south-eastern Anatolia. We work with our Strategic Partner, İyi Pamuk Uygulamaları Derneği (IPUD) – the Good Cotton Practices Association, to build Better Cotton supply and demand in Türkiye and transform Turkish cotton into a sustainable mainstream commodity.
Our programme in Türkiye is hugely important to Better Cotton, and our conference provides a fantastic opportunity to highlight this. In 2017, seven Better Cotton Member brands supported IPUD’s project ‘Toward Decent Working Conditions in Cotton Farms in Şanlıurfa’. IPUD and partners have continued to scale up that work, mobilising local resources and raising awareness. At this year’s conference in Istanbul, we’ll hear from IPUD Project Coordinator Nurcan Talay about the most recent project in Turkiye, ‘Women and Child-Friendly Mobile Area Project.’
With our overall focus of ‘Accelerating Impact’ at the Better Cotton Conference 2024, sessions will be showing stakeholders tangible ways of investing in the sustainability of the cotton supply chain and the livelihoods of cotton farming communities.
We’ll showcase another Turkish perspective as Tülin Akın gives the keynote for our Reporting on Data & Traceability theme. Tülin is the founder of social enterprise Tabit, Türkiye’s first agricultural social communication and information network and its first agricultural e-commerce system. Tabit modelled Türkiye’s first farmer credit card, enabling farmers to find financial resources without incurring losses.
Our other keynote speakers include Lewis Perkins from the Apparel Impact Institute, Aarti Kapoor from human rights agency Embode, and Dr Vidhura Ralapanawe from Epic Group. The themes we’re exploring are Putting People First, Driving Change at Field Level, Understanding Policy & Industry Trends and Reporting on Data & Traceability.
Join us in the beautiful city of Istanbul, or catch our plenary sessions via an online ticket. Find more details and register here.
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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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