Cotton's trade groups are making a direct pitch to apparel brands: the sustainability story of a garment starts with its fiber, and growers want sourcing decisions to reflect that. WWD's Lifestyle Monitor spoke with executives from Cotton Incorporated and Cotton USA, who supplied farm-level data, a life cycle study and consumer survey results. All of it comes from the cotton industry's own research programs, so it should be read as advocacy.
What the Growers' Data Says
Jesse Daystar, vice president and chief sustainability officer at Cotton Incorporated, cited the organization's 2023 National Resource Survey. Over four decades, he said, soil loss has fallen 45 percent, irrigation water-use efficiency has improved 58 percent, greenhouse gas emissions have dropped 25 percent and land-use efficiency has risen 30 percent. He tied those gains to wider use of cover crops, reduced tillage, precision agriculture, irrigation scheduling, flow meters and soil moisture monitoring.
Cover crop use among survey respondents climbed from 20 percent in 2015 to 48 percent in 2023, Daystar said. He added that no-till and strip-till adoption grew between 2008 and 2023 while conventional tillage declined.
Cotton Incorporated also commissioned WSP USA Inc. to carry out a life cycle assessment of cotton fiber production, which it describes as the most comprehensive of its kind to date. When temporary biogenic carbon dioxide flows are counted, the study found a net negative field-to-gin result of -0.264 kilograms of CO2 per kilogram of fiber. It also pointed to openings to improve circularity and make the carbon storage more permanent.
What Shoppers Say
The 2025 Global Lifestyle Monitor Survey, from Cotton Council International and Cotton Incorporated, polled 13,026 respondents. Three in four (75 percent) said they are interested in sustainable clothing, with 21 percent calling it essential and 54 percent nice to have. Some 83 percent regard cotton and other natural fibers as safe for the environment. Fewer than half said the same of rayon (48 percent), polyester (46 percent) or Tencel (41 percent).
On preference, 75 percent favor cotton, cotton blends or denim, against 7 percent for polyester, 5 percent for spandex and 4 percent for rayon. Across the survey, 59 percent said they would pay more for natural-fiber clothing. Respondents most often credited cotton with comfort (67 percent), softness (66 percent), quality (59 percent), sustainability (49 percent) and durability (44 percent).
The Case Against Synthetics
The article notes that brands often point to polyester's lower cost, and that nearly 70 percent of the world's textile fibers are now synthetic. It describes polyester as petroleum-based and says fibers shed from such fabrics become microplastics that can take hundreds of years to degrade.
Liz Hershfield, executive director of Cotton USA and co-director of the U.S. Cotton Trust Protocol, said more than 15,000 cotton farms exist, 98 percent of them family-owned and operated. She argued that their futures are shaped partly by brand sourcing choices, and that growers have faced difficult market conditions for several years. Daystar framed the pitch plainly: "Apparel brands should care because the sustainability story of a garment starts with the fiber."
Why It Matters
The message links environmental claims with consumer demand and with the economics of farming. Brands that weigh fiber choices will be hearing it from the people who sell cotton, using numbers those same groups gathered.
Reporting sources: WWD, “When Sustainability Matters, This Is What Farmers Bring to Fashion’s Table”.