United States

Potassium fertilisation has increased cotton yields by up to 70% in deficient soils, with fibre strength and elongation identified as the quality parameters most sensitive to potassium availability. Arkansas field trials across two growing seasons have reinforced current fertilisation recommendations and introduced new tissue-testing thresholds to support in-season crop monitoring.

A new lifecycle assessment released today by Cotton Incorporated reframes how the fibre's environmental performance is measured and contested. The study produces a net-negative carbon footprint at the farm gate while leaving open significant questions about the methodological assumptions and farming system consistency that underpin that finding, with implications that extend well beyond the fibre itself.

Clothing purchases have started rising again in the United States after a prolonged downturn, though the recovery remains split between luxury fashion and discount apparel. New Bank of America Institute data shows resale platforms drawing more frequent transactions, lower purchase values and growing seller participation, with Gen Z holding the largest seller share in 2026.

The global sportswear market is entering a slower, more demanding phase. HSBC's decision to cut Nike from Buy to Hold, slashing its price target from US$90 to US$48, has focused investor attention on a sector where modest growth, rising tariff costs and intensifying competition are making inherited scale a less reliable advantage than it once was.

Environmental permitting systems across ten major textile-producing nations contain significant gaps in how industrial pollution from spinning mills, dye houses and garment factories is regulated, a new UNEP report has found. Most national legislation fails to classify textile activities as environmentally significant or to consider gendered impacts on workers.

Lead has been found in fast-fashion children's clothing at levels exceeding US federal safety limits, according to preliminary research presented at the American Chemical Society's spring meeting. All 11 shirts tested surpassed the 100 parts-per-million regulatory threshold, with brightly coloured garments recording the highest concentrations and simulated digestion tests indicating harmful exposure risks for young children.

Textile recovery infrastructure in the United States is expanding, but remains uneven in scale and capability. Garment quality has declined, fibre complexity has increased, and industry-wide standardisation remains limited across the value chain—widening the gap between circularity ambition and material reality that recycling technology alone cannot close.

The United States generates roughly 17 million tonnes of textile waste each year. Approximately 85% of it ends in landfill or incineration. Extended Producer Responsibility legislation is now moving through California and several other states, with the EU tightening its own parallel framework simultaneously. The ambition is clear. What remains unclear is whether the collection infrastructure, sorting capacity, and economic incentives required to deliver on it exist in any coherent form.

The United States generates 17 million tonnes of textile waste annually, and the policy frameworks designed to address it are arriving faster than the infrastructure built to support them. California's SB 707 requires textile stewardship plans to be operational by 2030, yet the recovery network it depends on remains anchored in international reuse trade that the law was not designed to protect—and may inadvertently disrupt.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology has released NIR-SORT 2.0, expanding its spectroscopic dataset for textile identification systems. The update strengthens model validation by introducing diverse material specimens and enhanced instrumentation profiles, addressing persistent limitations in benchmarking fibre classification models used in automated textile sorting environments.