The United States Cotton Trust Protocol was recognized as an ISEAL Community Member, following a rigorous and meticulous approval process and only 18 months after the program’s launch.

ISEAL is a global membership organization that assists accredited sustainability systems in their work with the purpose of increasing impact and establishing markets that are a force for good. The group focuses on a wide range of global difficulties, including climate emergency, biodiversity catastrophe, and human rights issues. To build sustainability systems, ISEAL aims to identify credible practices for sustainability, foster collaboration, and shared experience, deliver expertise and training, and promote innovation to strengthen sustainability systems.

Karin Kreider, ISEAL’s Executive Director, said that she is delighted to congratulate the United States Cotton Trust Protocol on becoming an ISEAL Community Member. The Trust Protocol assists cotton growers in developing tailored management strategies targeted at enhancing sustainability, and creative data and metric utilization aid in measuring progress over time. They are thrilled to have a new perspective in the ISEAL learning community, as well as another member trying to enhance cotton sustainability results.

Members of the ISEAL Community must be dedicated to continuously improving their systems via learning and innovation, with a focus on the value of cooperation. They must also be open about how their initiatives function and how they gauge the effect.

The Trust Protocol is the first fiber sustainability approach that sets quantitative, verifiable targets and measures progress on six important sustainability metrics: land usage, soil carbon, water management, soil loss, greenhouse gas emissions, and energy efficiency. It is also the world's first sustainable cotton fiber to provide article-level supply chain transparency to its members via the Protocol Consumption Management Solution.

Dr. Gary Adams, president of the U.S. Cotton Trust Protocol, said that they’re pleased that the Trust Protocol has been recognized as an ISEAL Community Member, given the rigorous procedures and governance that ISEAL adheres to. ISEAL Community participation allows the Trust Protocol to continue to create a new benchmark in more sustainable cotton production, where complete transparency is a reality and continual progress to lower their environmental impact is the primary aim.

The United States Cotton Trust Protocol is in line with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, is recognized by Textile Exchange and Forum for the Future, and is a component of the Sustainable Apparel Coalition, Cotton 2025 Sustainable Cotton Challenge, Cotton 2040, and Cotton Up initiatives. It has also been acknowledged and published in the ITC Standards Map, and the Partnership for Sustainable Textiles has accepted it as a standard for sustainable cotton.