India: The Beating Heart of Our Business

In the coming days and weeks we will be posting various blogs and tweets to tell the amazing story of our recent visit to India during the cotton harvesting season.

In an amazing 12-day period at the end of November/early December, we covered many thousands of miles of India by air and road.

Our carbon footprint on the trip was a bit larger than we would have liked. But the results of this visit in terms of our understanding of the journey of Fairtrade/organic cotton through the supply chain, thus helping us to build a more solid ethical clothing business platform, were second to none.

We want to share that journey with you.

In the Adilabad District of the Telangana Region we saw for ourselves the positive impact on our marginalised cotton farming communities – and our planet – of our insistence in only using Fairtrade/organic cotton in our school, University and corporate clothing.

A fair price is paid to the cotton farmers for their crops, and funds from the Fairtrade social premium support education, better farming techniques and overall community development.

You can see the Fairtrade Cotton Mark on all of our clothing.

We were also proud to see how our factories were insisting on ONLY using human resource (ie plastic bottles etc) recycled polyester in their garments.

You can also see the Global Recycled Standard certification Mark in all of our clothes.

All this means that we can have the confidence to tell you, our customers, that when you buy a Koolskools/SUstainable garment, not only are you wearing a high quality garment in and of itself, but you are also supporting marginalised cotton farming communities and protecting our planet.

In our next blog, we will be taking a more in-depth look at Chetna Organic, the wonderfully inspiring organisation that hosted our visit in Telangana. Chetna aims to improve the livelihood options of small farming households in rainfed regions of India by making their farming systems more sustainable and more profitable. Chetna has developed an innovative strategy combining the strengths of collective action and creating a supply chain owned by the farmer.

Watch this space!

Koolskools

20 January 2020