TOP STORY

Cotton Story: The Crop That Fuelled Empires and Slavery Finally Reveals Where It Started

For decades, scientists knew that upland cotton, the species behind around 90% of the world's natural textile fibre, was domesticated somewhere in the Americas, but could not say exactly where. A new genomic study has now provided the answer, tracing the crop's origins to the coastal scrublands of northwestern Yucatán, where farmers worked thousands of years before the Maya.

Other Top Stories
 
CIRCULARITY / RECYCLING / SECONDS / WASTE

Efficiency-Only Policies Are Failing to Reduce Fashion's Environmental Footprint as Production Volumes Keep Rising

Overproduction and overconsumption are driving the global fashion system beyond ecological limits, with EU efficiency measures failing to deliver absolute environmental reductions. New research has identified four structural lock-ins sustaining excess production and consumption, and proposes a transformative sufficiency-based policy mix designed to address their root causes across the sector.

 
FLASHPOINT: CLIMATE
Material Innovation / Bezos Fund

Breakthrough textile materials have received $34 million in new Bezos Earth Fund grants, backing research into bacterial fibres, spider-silk-inspired biodegradable materials, coloured cotton and cotton seedbank restoration. The funding targets materials that can match rayon, silk and cotton while improving cost, performance and environmental outcomes across fashion and textile supply chains.

Climate Action / Ethiopia Project

Climate resilience, productivity and workplace safety are being advanced across Ethiopia's leather, textile and garment sector through a new ILO-Japan joint initiative. The one-year programme targets 40 factories across five cities, integrating Japanese expertise, digitalised safety tools and a women's leadership development programme to drive sustainable and inclusive industrial growth.

 
 
 
FOCUS: COTTON

Latin America's Cotton Diversity Is an Asset Nobody Has Unlocked Yet

Latin American cotton operates across a wide spectrum, yet rarely as a coherent regional bloc. Argentina exemplifies this tension: a significant cotton producer whose structural fragmentation mirrors the wider regional condition. José Luis Spontón, researcher at INTA's Reconquista Experimental Research Station (EEA Reconquista), examines what is holding the sector back and what associative models from Brazil and Paraguay suggest about the path forward.

 
 
 
SPOTLIGHT EDITIONS: SELECT 4
 

"Quote Unquote"

Toby Moss
Toby Moss
Chief Commercial Officer
Worn Again Technologies
The Worn Again process has been designed from the start to process polycottons, which are a cornerstone fabric in modern clothes, but also some of the hardest to recycle. We also provide a unique solution to the market, which is the solvent based recycling approach. This approach is able to selectively target key materials, in this case polyester and cotton, in a way that other technologies are not.

"Quote Unquote"

Eileen Mockus
Eileen Mockus
Chief Operating Officer
Accelerating Circularity
A big part is data and transparency: recyclers often lack reliable, standardized material and attachment-data about trims (what they’re made of, coatings, adhesives), so the safest operational choice is removal. The other part is inertia and risk-aversion: sorting and recycling lines are tuned for throughput and predictable inputs; including trims creates contamination risk, downgrades output or causes downtime to handle foreign materials.
 
 
FOCUS: LEATHER

IILF 2026 Exposes Gap Between Boardroom Sustainability and Tannery Floor Reality

Chennai's IILF 2026 exposed contradictions shaping India's leather industry: innovative chemical systems alongside organisational failures, Trump tariffs suppressing demand yet prices holding firm, and sustainability frameworks that never reach tannery workers. The 'Leather Carnival' demonstrated both the sector's professionalisation and its struggle to reconcile traditional identity with market realities.