The true costs of cotton

Since 2004, EJF has worked to raise awareness of the environmental and human rights abuses in the global cotton industry.

• EJF has worked to build consumer and retailer awareness of the true costs of cotton, urging buyers to choose their cotton carefully, calling on manufacturers and retailers to develop effective and transparent product labelling and reject cotton from countries where environmental and human rights abuses are widespread. We help to promote fair-trade and organic cotton through our JUST-FOR t-shirt brand.

• Using Uzbekistan as an example of worst-practice in cotton production, EJF uncovered widespread environmental and human rights abuses in the cotton industry, including state-sponsored forced child labour in the annual cotton harvest. As a result of a major boycott we led, which was supported by major industry players, we were successful in pressuring the Uzbek Government to sign two International Labour Organization Conventions on child labour. In the past decade, the use of forced child labour has drastically reduced.

• Following our success with retailers, EJF also called on all governments, the European Union and other trading partners to ensure traceable supply chains and to help secure an end to forced child labour in Uzbekistan.
  

EJF first entered Uzbekistan in 2005. What we found there was one of the most exploitative enterprises in the world.

Each year, the country’s billion dollar cotton industry was responsible for massive environmental destruction - including the draining of the Aral Sea - and was being propped up by State-controlled forced, child labour.

EJF investigators documented children as young as seven handpicking the cotton for days on end; they were doing this not to help their parents’ meagre income on family farms, but because the brutal and corrupt government shut schools across the country and told them and their classmates to go to the fields. Beginning in the sweltering heat of late summer and ending as the first snows of winter set in, these children were forced to undertake back-breaking work in harsh conditions for little or no pay.

In our report, and award-winning film, White Gold: the True Costs of Cotton we shone an international spotlight on the Uzbek government’s endemic use of forced labour. Each harvest, hundreds of thousands of children would be removed from school, forced to pick cotton for little to no money, left at risk of violence and exposed to dangerous pesticides.

In 2008, the Uzbek government signed two ILO Conventions on child labour.

In 2008, EJF’s follow-up investigation Still in the Fields, revealed that, despite signing two ILO Conventions, the Uzbek government was still using child labour, sparking international condemnation and the formation of a retail coalition calling for an end to Uzbek cotton in supply chains whilst child labour continued.

By 2016, far fewer children under 16 were documented labouring in the cotton fields of Uzbekistan. But, teenagers and young adults continue to live at the mercy of human rights abuses in the cotton industry.

The abuses linked to the cotton industry are not only a problem for Uzbekistan.

The cotton crop is grown on around 2.5% of the planet’s arable land, consuming around 2.6% of the global water footprint for consumed goods, and responsible for $2 billion worth of chemical pesticides every year, many of which are considered hazardous by the World Health Organisation.

Meanwhile from Asia to Africa, millions of children under the age of 18 continue to be exploited by the industry.

In our investigations - the Children Behind Our Cotton, Slave Nation, the Deadly Chemicals in Cotton, and Somebody Knows - EJF has uncovered the true costs of our global cotton addiction, and showcased just how transparency in the supply chain could be achieved.

As part of our Cotton Campaign, in 2006, EJF launched its own organic, fairly-traded and climate neutral t-shirt line.

Working with high-profile celebrities and designers - including Katharine Hamnett, Christian Lacroix, Luella, Vivienne Westwood, Lily Cole and Jenny Packham - we aim to show that sustainable cotton can be fashionable and affordable.

Offering bespoke designs, with a carbon footprint 90% lower than a conventional, non-organic t-shirt, all of the profits from our sales go back into EJF projects and campaigns uncovering and combating environmental and human rights abuses across the globe.

“There is no such thing as cheap clothing. Someone, somewhere is paying the real price.” - EJF Executive Director, Steve Trent