A Weather Shock to Cotton Could Push Fashion Further Towards Fossil Fibres

Fashion's sourcing data and its fibre data are moving in different directions. Companies in Textile Exchange's benchmark raised the share of five fibres sourced through standards and certification programmes to 72% in 2025, while polyester took most of the growth in fibre output in 2024. A cotton shortfall driven by El Niño would show which measure defines progress.

Subir Ghosh

14 October 2026

5 minutes

Long Story, Cut Short

Polyester added about 7 million tonnes in 2024, nearly all of the year's growth in fibre output, as cotton fell.
Recycled polyester depends almost entirely on plastic bottles, so its supply cannot rise quickly to replace lost cotton.
Sourcing shares are proportions of purchases, so on their own they can understate a large shift towards virgin polyester.

Cotton supply rises and falls with harvests, which leaves it exposed to El Niño in a way that synthetic fibres produced in factories largely are not.

WEATHER EXPOSURE Cotton supply rises and falls with harvests, which leaves it exposed to El Niño in a way that synthetic fibres produced in factories largely are not. AI-Generated / magnific

Cotton's share of the world's fibre supply has been shrinking for several years (Textile Exchange put it at about 22% in 2022 and 19% in 2024), and polyester, overwhelmingly fossil-based, has supplied most of the growth in between. Fibre production as a whole almost doubled between 2000 and 2022, from 58 million tonnes to 116 million. A strong El Niño now threatens the cotton side of that balance directly. Countries responsible for around half of global cotton production are expected to face extreme weather in 2026/27.

The last cotton price spike showed where buyers turn when the natural fibre becomes expensive. Cotton futures reached their highest since June 2011 in January 2022, and Indian cotton hit a record of more than ₹1,11,000 a candy (356 kg) that year. "Cotton prices are so high that the industry has to shift towards cheaper fibre," said Saurin Parikh, who chairs the textile committee of the Gujarat Chamber of Commerce and Industry, in April 2023. Blended fabrics were trading at ₹70–80 a metre against ₹80–90 for cotton, and some buyers had rejected goods in which the blending was undeclared. The industry moved into viscose and polyester.

Price also largely decided which polyester filled the gap. Polyester output rose from 61 million tonnes in 2021 to 63 million in 2022, and the combined share of recycled fibres slipped from about 8.5% to 7.9%. Textile Exchange attributed that fall mainly to growth in fossil-based polyester, "which had lower prices than recycled polyester". In that episode the cheaper fibre prevailed twice: over cotton, and over the recycled form of its substitute.

The brands that buy the finished goods report their progress through Textile Exchange's Materials Benchmark, which covered 384 companies in its latest data. Their reporting tracks how fibre is bought, through standards, certifications and other programmes. Mills and garment makers choose the fibre itself, order by order and to a price.

If El Niño cuts the 2026/27 crop, those mills and garment makers will face the choice Gujarat's industry faced in 2022–23, in a market where polyester's lead has since widened.

Polyester Supplied Most New Fibre

Textile Exchange's 2025 Materials Market Report, covering 2024, puts global fibre production at about 132 million tonnes, up from about 125 million a year earlier. Polyester accounted for 59% of that output and cotton for 19%, one percentage point lower; 88% of the polyester was fossil-based, and polyamide, the second most-produced synthetic, added a further 5%. Fossil-based polyester alone came to about 69 million tonnes, nearly three times the world's cotton crop. At that scale, cotton is the smaller partner in any substitution.

The annual movement is starker than the shares. Polyester output rose from about 71 million tonnes in 2023 to about 78 million in 2024, an increase of close to 10%, while cotton slipped from 24.8 million tonnes in 2022/23 to 24.5 million in 2023/24. Total fibre output rose by about 7 million tonnes, a little under 6%. On Textile Exchange's rounded figures, polyester accounted for almost the whole of that increase, and cotton's own volume fell.

Cotton output moves with harvests, which is why a weather event can threaten it at all; polyester output moves with industrial capacity, which no rainfall pattern interrupts in the same way. Textile Exchange projects fibre production reaching about 169 million tonnes by 2030 if business continues as usual, roughly 37 million tonnes more than in 2024. Two years earlier, the same projection stood at 147 million tonnes, so expected growth has been revised up by 22 million tonnes within two editions of the report. A harvest-bound fibre is poorly placed to take a larger share of that increase.

The plant-based alternative to polyester is far smaller. Cellulosic fibres such as viscose, the other fibre Gujarat's industry turned to in 2022–23, amounted to about 8.4 million tonnes in 2024 after growth of about 6.4%, roughly a third of the cotton crop, and their growth trailed polyester's by more than three percentage points. A large cotton shortfall would outrun them.

Polyester's position has also strengthened since the 2022 spike, after which Ashish Gujarati, a former president of the Southern Gujarat Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said in 2023 that cotton prices had made the natural fibre unviable for the industry. Polyester's share of global fibre rose from 54% in 2022 to 59% in 2024, while cotton's fell by three percentage points and total output grew from about 116 million tonnes to 132 million. A spinner or brand replacing lost cotton in 2026/27 would not need a new supply chain. The default substitute is larger now than when Gujarat's mills last made the switch.

Recycled polyester is the lower-impact form of that substitute, and its volume is rising. Output reached about 9.3 million tonnes in 2024, up from about 8.9 million the year before, but its share of all polyester fell from 12.5% to 12%, which Textile Exchange put down to the larger increase in virgin polyester production. That share stood at 15% in 2021 and 14% in 2022. The recycled fibre has lost ground inside polyester in every year since.

Recycled Polyester Cannot Keep Pace

Recycled polyester is the lower-impact form of that substitute, and its volume is rising. Output reached about 9.3 million tonnes in 2024, up from about 8.9 million the year before, but its share of all polyester fell from 12.5% to 12%, which Textile Exchange put down to the larger increase in virgin polyester production. That share stood at 15% in 2021 and 14% in 2022. The recycled fibre has lost ground inside polyester in every year since.

Recycled output added about 0.4 million tonnes in 2024, while polyester as a whole added about 7 million, so roughly one tonne in eighteen of new polyester was recycled. Textile Exchange's figures show that 98% of recycled polyester is made from plastic bottles, a feedstock generated by drinks and packaging markets whose volumes and collection rates lie largely beyond fashion's control. Its 2023 report listed growing competition for PET bottles as feedstock among the reasons recycled polyester lost share in 2022, alongside systemic difficulties in scaling textile-to-textile recycling. A sudden rise in demand for cotton substitutes would meet that limit first.

Other recycled streams are smaller still. Recycled fibres of all kinds made up 7.6% of global output in 2024, less than 1% of global fibre came from pre- and post-consumer recycled textiles, and recycled cotton held at about 1% of cotton output, roughly 300,000 tonnes. The remaining lower-impact routes are held back partly by price. Recycled polyamide made up only 2% of polyamide in 2022, held back by technical recycling problems and comparatively lower prices for virgin polyamide, and biobased polyester stayed at about 0.01% of the polyester market, mainly because of price, availability and doubts over its sustainability. Outside bottles, lower-impact supply remains marginal.

The companies in the Materials Benchmark raised the share of cotton, polyester, polyamide, viscose and wool they sourced through standards, certifications and other programmes from 68% in 2024 to 72% in 2025, and coverage of the figures ran under the headline "Textile fibre emissions rise despite sourcing progress". The sourcing share is a ratio across participants' purchases, while emissions follow tonnage. Cotton shows the same arithmetic: cotton from recognised programmes rose from 31% to 34% of virgin production between 2022/23 and 2023/24, as the crop itself shrank. Both measures improved in years when fossil-based fibre output grew.

A repeat of the 2022–23 choice in 2026/27 would let the sourcing share keep rising while more of the fibre brands buy comes from fossil feedstock. Only the tonnage would show it.

Recycling Gaps

The recycled share of cellulosic fibres rose to 1.1% in 2024 from 0.7%, about 90,000 tonnes.
Recycled wool's share edged up to 7% from 6%, reaching about 83,000 tonnes of fibre in 2024.
Two-thirds of manmade cellulosic fibres are produced using certified or controlled feedstock, Textile Exchange reports.
Half of all mohair produced is certified to Textile Exchange's Responsible Mohair Standard, its 2025 market report shows.
Cellulosic fibres held a steady share of about 6% of global fibre output in 2024, Textile Exchange data show.

Wider Fibre Picture

Other plant-based fibres totalled about 6.9 million tonnes in 2024, with jute accounting for more than half.
Flax and hemp each made up about 4% of other plant-based fibre output in 2024.
The world produced around four tonnes of fibre every second in 2024, according to Textile Exchange's 2025 report.
In BCI's first impact assessment in five years, 69% of farmers reduced synthetic nitrogen use per kilogram of cotton.
The same BCI assessment found that 65% of participating farmers cut synthetic pesticide active-ingredient use per hectare of cotton.

Subir Ghosh

SUBIR GHOSH is a Kolkata-based independent journalist-writer-researcher who writes about environment, corruption, crony capitalism, conflict, wildlife, and cinema. He is the author of two books, and has co-authored two more with others. He writes, edits, reports and designs. He is also a professionally trained and qualified photographer.

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