[Fortune] Reports of Forced Labor are Driving Brands to Abandon Chinese Cotton

Early last year, amid mounting reports of forced labor and human rights abuses in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), U.S. outdoor apparel maker Patagonia resolved to stop sourcing cotton from China. From April 2020 on, the brand’s global suppliers had to vet and eliminate any links to the world’s largest cotton producer. The decision wasn’t easy. China accounts for roughly 20% of global cotton supply, and Xinjiang produces some of the highest-grade cotton in the world.

“We had to walk away from business partners, we had to redesign styles to fit the substitute cotton, and we had to do away with styles that we could no longer make because the quality of cotton was no longer available,” says Wendy Savage, director of social responsibility and traceability at Patagonia, which declined to say what products it had discontinued.

Patagonia isn’t alone.

U.S. retailer L.L.Bean pledged to eliminate Chinese cotton from its supply chain by the end of this year, citing “extremely troubling” reports about Xinjiang.

Victoria’s Secret parent company L Brands has committed to eliminating Chinese cotton from its supply chains, too. L Brands told Fortune it used tools provided by supply chain analytics firm Sourcemap to map most of its apparel supply chain in 2019 and cross-referenced its suppliers against a list of companies prohibited by U.S. sanctions related to Xinjiang.

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SOURCE: Fortune