Germany has launched a new Textiles Alliance. The goal is to help move international textile supply chain towards better labor and environmental practices. Improvements are sought at every link in the supply chain -- from cotton fields to the dyeing, clothing production process to distribution and retail.

In particular the Textiles Alliance seeks decent wages, an end to forced labor and child labor, respect for safety standards, and a stop to the use of certain particularly environmentally toxic chemicals in the textile supply chain.

Cotton is grown on about 2.5 per cent of global farmland, but uses a disproportionate amount of dangerous herbicides, fungicides and insecticides. Membership in the alliance is voluntary. About 30 textile companies and associations have joined Textiles Alliance but many key industry players and associations in Germany are not interested. They say that certain chemical substances can’t be replaced and that a gap-free monitoring of all production steps from cotton fields to the retail-store clothes-hanger is unrealistic.

In their view a strategy of trying to address the problem through purely voluntary industry participation, focused only on the German market, will fail. Instead they advocate a European Union-scale approach based on social and environmental regulations covering all textile imports.