06/08/2026
Last week, our Vice President, Innovation Burcu Kugu participated in the Organic Cotton Summit in Istanbul. Over the course of two days, she had the chance to connect with many of our partners and stakeholders to talk about some of the most pressing issues in sustainability.
One major theme throughout the event was the need to connect material choicesโsuch as organic cotton or recycled fiberโwith meaningful human rights due diligence. Material choices alone arenโt enough to address sustainability risks.
A few other key takeaways from the Summit that weโre thinking about:
๐ข Certification and traceability are important tools, but they are not substitutes for human rights due diligence.
๐ข Circularity begins not only with what products are made from, but also with how those materials are produced and how people are treated throughout the supply chain.
๐ข "Renewable" does not automatically mean "sustainable."
๐ข Sustainable agriculture requires investment in both environmental and social outcomes.
As the textile sector moves toward greater sustainability and circularity, the real measure of success will not be how effectively we identify risks, but how effectively we work together to address them.
When we apply due diligence expectations to farms, we need to be practical. One of the key lessons from our work is that child labor, unsafe working conditions, and recruitment risks are rarely isolated farm-level issues. They are often symptoms of broader challenges such as poverty, migration, informal labor systems, and limited access to education and social services.
Addressing these risks requires more than compliance. It requires collaboration, remediation, and long-term engagement with farming communities. At the Fair Labor Association, we see this firsthand through our Harvesting the Future (HTF) โ Cotton in India program.
