In July, I wrote about the need for better cotton data in my Founder’s Letter and included a poll asking for your opinion about the importance of transparency.
The results are in and there are a couple of things that surprised the entire Kingpins team. First was that 100 individuals took the time to take the poll. That’s a massive wow and a huge thank you. I have no idea who responded, but we are grateful, and we want to share the results (here).
We are also surprised and, frankly, gratified that people (at least this group of 100) care about data and provenance; and the idea of creating a garment tag that provides full environmental data. We are thrilled our poll was not regarded as a waste of your time. PHEW!
The poll results, once again, demonstrate that our industry has to stop faking it when it comes to sustainability and start coughing up data — especially data that is easy to gather and easy to share, for example cotton from the USA, Australia and Brazil. And we need to make a long-term commitment to gather and share data from less-developed cotton-growing countries. Obviously, it’s not easy — but neither was putting a mobile phone into the hands of everyone in the world.
There is so much to be done. We can gather the environmental impact of each and every synthetic and man-made cellulosic fiber plant if they give it to us. Textile mills can provide their information as to what it takes to make denim if they share.
Transformers Foundation is committed to dig data out of all producers in the denim world as fast as their little team can go. I am confident that by 2028 we will get there or not full there, real close.
Let’s all hustle up — we only have fewer than 2,000 days to go!
-Andrew Olah
