Popular international fashion brands have formed a consortium to grow environmentally-friendly cotton on a global scale for use in their products.
The initiative is backed and funded by 19 brands and retailers, including Adidas, H&M, IKEA, Levi's, Marks & Spencer and Nike, and also with grants from the Dutch, Swedish and Swiss governments.
The group, called the Better Cotton Initiative, is running a pilot on the mainland this year, with potential areas in Xinjiang and along the Yellow River and Yangtze River identified, after pilots in five other countries, including Brazil, India and Pakistan, over the past two years.
Michael Kobori, who chairs the initiative's governing council, told the South China Morning Post that the purpose was to teach cotton farmers to reduce their use of water and pesticides, and not to use child labour.
'Ninety per cent of cotton farmers in the world, including China and India, are individuals running small family farms,' he said. 'The initiative trains them to grow cotton more efficiently.'
It has harvested a total of 100,000 tonnes of the crop and trained 100,000 farmers, working with the Word Wildlife Fund and other non-governmental organisations.
The pilot in Pakistan has saved a third of the water and pesticides used in conventional cotton farming and increased farmers' income by 69 per cent.