BASF’s e3® Sustainable Cotton program was born in 2013 to meet the needs of two audiences: cotton farmers, whose interests were piqued by on-farm sustainable practices; and consumers, who enthusiastically embraced the food industry’s farm-to-table movement and wondered why their textile brands weren’t being as transparent regarding their supply chains. Consumers began asking tough questions about where their clothes were coming from, how they were made, and how this affected the environment – and they weren’t always happy with the answers they were given.
As retailers scrambled to address these consumer concerns, they found a huge disconnect in every part of their supply chain and, essentially, not enough data to provide the transparency that consumers demanded. This is what allowed the e3 Cotton program to take off. BASF’s unique position in the supply chain enabled brands to deliver on these demands with the only sustainable cotton program that is truly ingrained at the farmer level by tracking environmental outcomes back to each farmer’s individual cotton field – and even to each bale of cotton.
HOW e3 SUSTAINABLE COTTON WORKS: A FOCUS ON SUSTAINABILITY
The e3 Sustainable Cotton program stands for socially equitable, environmentally responsible, and economically viable. These three elements are not only part of its name, but they’re ingrained in the program mission to create a better world by redefining the cotton fiber value chain. The program enrolled more than 900 U.S. farmers during the 2021 growing season, an increase of 25% over
the previous year. Those farmers committed 100% of their eligible Stoneville® and FiberMax® cotton acres to the program. Last year, that resulted in more than 1.2 million bales.
Farmers commit to tracking eight on-farm sustainability measures using, MyFarms, a third-party digital platform. The platform tracks the following data: irrigation water use and water quality, pesticide management and usage, soil conservation and fertility management, greenhouse gas emissions, energy use and conservation, worker health and safety, identity preservation and soil carbon. These sustainability measures help farmers reduce soil erosion, save water and lower cotton’s carbon footprint, all while providing retailers with the information they need to deliver on the answers consumers expect.
Growing cotton under the e3 Sustainable Cotton label means that products ranging from textiles to apparel were made according to the highest sustainable production standards, while meeting the demands of today’s industry. Simply put, e3 Cotton has the sustainable growing practices, high-quality fiber performance, transparent production tracing and hard data to back up the claims.