The newly unveiled Cotton Rankings Report from Solidaridad paints the most detailed picture yet of the material mix of 100 brands and retailers, thanks to exclusive brand data from Good On You. From ambiguous language to plastic dependency, here’s what we found while examining brands’ claims and, crucially, what they’re not telling us.
Analysing 100 fashion brands’ cotton use
“Since the end of 2018, 100% of the cotton we use has come from more sustainable sources.” It’s a positive-sounding statement that could very well nudge a shopper into making a feel-good purchase, one that appears to have done some good for the planet. But a new report that combines Good On You’s extensive brand data with Solidaridad’s research and expertise in the cotton industry reveals that such statements rarely tell the full story.
The 2025 Cotton Rankings report doesn’t just look at which brands are using “sustainable” cotton, broadly speaking. It digs into their certifications, how much cotton they’re using overall, and—tellingly—how that stacks up against the volume of synthetics in their products.
Reviewing all these figures in tandem allows us to better contextualise claims such as the one quoted above, which comes from Adidas’s most recent annual report and tells only part of the sportswear behemoth’s fibre story. But this is about more than just one brand; it’s a snapshot of fashion at large and its predisposition towards vague claims that shine a preferable (and green) light on tricky issues.
The certification transparency gap
As its starting point, the report ranks 100 brands and retailers—from H&M to Patagonia, and Hugo Boss to United Colors of Benetton—according to what percentage of their total cotton is certified.
“Certified” is itself a tricky business. The report acknowledges a selection of certifications including Better Cotton (and equivalents such as myBMP Australia and Cotton made in Africa), organic, some smaller certifications such as Fairtrade and the US Cotton Trust Protocol, and recycled cotton. That’s because these are widely recognised across the fashion and textile industry and externally verified by independent third parties.
The report finds that just 35 out of 100 brands provide a detailed breakdown of their cotton certifications.
Where certification information is lacking, you get a lot of brands talking about using “sustainable” or “preferred” cotton while providing very little, if any, explanation for what that means.
Just 35 out of 100 brands provide a detailed breakdown of their cotton certifications
Kate Hobson-Lloyd, Good On You’s sustainability manager, notes: “As an analyst working on this project, there were too many instances of brands saying, ‘we source x amount of preferred cotton’ and the definition of preferred being really vague.” She adds that even when brands did disclose what they meant by preferred or sustainable, they often didn’t link the definitions with a certification. “How is anyone supposed to pull all this apart?” she asks.
Hugo Boss, Hema, and Ikea, for instance, all reportedly used 100% certified cotton, but none of them disclosed a breakdown of which certifications. Other brands that used more than 80% certified cotton also did not detail a breakdown of which certifications; these brands include Gucci, Walmart, and Levi’s. The problem spans all levels of fashion. We may know, for instance, that one brand discloses it uses certified cotton from several schemes, but without the breakdowns, it’s hard to determine what that really adds up to.
That level of disclosure is not impossible, even if it’s not always technically easy for a brand to trace it. Brands including Adidas, H&M, Jack Wolfskin, and C&A do provide detailed breakdowns for precisely what percentage of their cotton comes under which certifications. “I don’t underestimate how much work must go into all that traceability, and even better, to go ahead and publish it for consumers to see, but if one brand can do it, I don’t see why other brands can’t,” says Hobson-Lloyd.
Though certifications are by no means perfect—GOTS has been dogged by fraud and accusations of data manipulation, and false claims have been lodged against Better Cotton—they are often still the best yardstick we have to measure brands’ efforts against, given their own unverified claims have been found sorely lacking.
But there is a hierarchy. In Good On You’s ratings methodology, GOTS and Fairtrade score higher than Better Cotton, for instance.
So, knowing what certifications brands are using is imperative to get a well-rounded picture of their efforts. “It shows, for example, if you focus mainly on recycled then you don’t invest in farmers. Whereas with organic cotton, you invest directly in farmers because it’s traceable back to the farm level. The type of preferred material says something about your ambition as a brand,” says Tamar Hoek, senior director and head of the global fashion portfolio at Solidaridad.
Brands rarely disclose material volume
Disclosing certifications is just the start, however, which is why this iteration of the Cotton Rankings goes even deeper into a subject many brands don’t like to touch—volume. Specifically, total volume of cotton used, and total volume of cotton versus total volume of synthetics.
Let’s start with the former. By knowing precisely how much cotton a brand uses each year, we can start to get a picture of how much it might be producing compared to other brands, its overall material impact, its buying power, and how significant its use of certified cotton is.
“I can’t place enough emphasis on how important traceability and transparency is. You can’t take ownership over something that you’ve not traced,” says Hobson-Lloyd.
But brands famously don’t like to talk about how much material they use or how much stuff they make. Just 29 of the 100 brands in the report disclosed basic cotton volumes. Hoek theorises that unwillingness to publish such figures could be due to brands not wanting to show their cards when it comes to market power, or a lack thereof, as well as brand positioning. A brand that’s big on transparency may jump at the chance to reveal how much cotton it uses, but a brand that is trying to shield itself from scrutiny? Not so much.
I can’t place enough emphasis on how important traceability and transparency is.
Kate Hobson-Lloyd – sustainability manager at Good On You
Beth Jensen, chief impact officer at industry non-profit Textile Exchange, which publishes total global fibre production figures annually in its Material Market Report, says some brands disclose raw material usage to comply with certain pieces of legislation and others have invested internally in tracking systems. However, they add that the availability and reliability of material data is limited and dependent on factors such as accurate paperwork, the ability to compile and correlate different types of data from different sources, and the number of steps in supply chains. Simply put, some brands are more capable of accessing accurate total material volumes than others.
Despite the small sample, we can still learn from the cotton volumes we have. Inditex, the group that owns brands including Zara and Pull & Bear, tops out the table at 298,582.2 tonnes of cotton. It has huge buying power and the potential to influence and fund systemic change such as farmers converting to organic at scale. 69% of its cotton is certified, which is a relatively high percentage, but due to its huge scale, that leaves over 92,000 tonnes of cotton uncertified.
Zalando, meanwhile, discloses certifications for the entire 99% of its cotton that is certified. However, it uses just 2,788 tonnes of cotton. While its efforts are noteworthy and set a great example, its potential impact, both positive and negative, is far lower than that of Inditex, or others higher up the list such as Gildan and Nike.
The higher the volume a brand buys, the bigger its capacity for long-term, systemic change—and that’s true for all fibres.
Plastic dependency: synthetics still dominate
According to Textile Exchange’s latest figures, cotton is the second most widely produced fibre, accounting for 19% of the global fibre market (for all industries, not just fashion).
Synthetics, meanwhile, account for 69% of all fibres produced, with polyester alone making up 59%. “Key drivers [for the growth of synthetics] could include the demand for performance characteristics, as well as the low cost of virgin fossil-based synthetics, particularly polyester, and the scalability that this can offer global brands,” says Jensen.
“Using synthetics in items that don’t require them is about being able to produce more and take more margin,” says author and sustainable fashion content creator and writer Andrea Cheong, who advocates for the wider use of natural fibres.
Indeed, the Cotton Rankings report notes that ultra-fast fashion brand SHEIN, which has grown astronomically in recent years, relies on synthetics for 82% of its fibres. This imbalance and the growing prevalence of synthetics is precisely why they are present in a cotton report.
“We always want to provide insight into cotton and how sustainable [the cotton a brand uses is]. But if a brand says it uses 100% certified cotton and it’s just 5% of its material mix and the rest is virgin synthetics, then how sustainable is it as a company?” asks Hoek. “We feel it’s important to have this information on one platform, so that brands, policy makers, investors, and consumers can have more information about how transparent companies are and make a specific choice.”
If a brand uses 100% certified cotton and it’s just 5% of its material mix and the rest is virgin synthetics, how sustainable is it as a company?
Tamar Hoek – senior director and head of the global fashion portfolio at Solidaridad
Returning to Adidas’s claim of using 100% certified cotton, its efforts certainly shouldn’t be sniffed at, but cotton makes up just 12% of its overall material mix, whereas synthetics make up 54%. Its cotton strategy is not representative of its overall sustainability as a brand.
Adidas isn’t alone in this among its competitors. Similarly, Puma claims 99% of its cotton is certified but it makes up just 10% of the brand’s material portfolio, while synthetics represent 50%.
In fact, 26 out of 100 brands use more than 50% synthetic fibres—a crucial piece of context. “I think a lot of these brands are taking advantage of the fact that people want to hear enough to feel good about their purchases,” says Cheong.
Hoek and Hobson-Lloyd both acknowledge that cotton is not perfect. Depending on the region, the farmer, local practices, and many other factors, cotton can be a source of heavy pesticide and water use (though reports of it being a “thirsty” crop are often oversimplified and lacking context).
Cotton can also be a vehicle for regenerative agriculture, social mobility, poverty relief, and biodiversity. Fossil fuel-based synthetics (which make up 88% of all synthetics according to Textile Exchange), on the other hand, cannot.
From recycled fibres and innovative new materials to natural alternatives where practical, brands do have other options and Hoek hopes the Cotton Rankings will spur brands to reflect on their material choices.
But to make real progress, we first need the full picture.
