The US Cotton Trust Protocol aims to trace and track cotton fiber on its blockchain platform in partnership with TextileGenesis. This will encourage sustainable practices across the cotton supply chain and enhance its transparency with consumers and retailers.

Launched in 2020, the Trust Protocol has over 300 brands, retailers, mills and manufacturers in its member network, including Gap and Next. Transparency and traceability practices are growing in demand across almost all industries. The Cotton Trust Protocol addresses these challenges by collecting data related to sustainability in cotton production and setting verifiable and measurable goals.

The program aims to reassure brands that the cotton has been sustainably grown and has low environmental and social impact. It works on providing transparency across the supply chain through its Protocol Credit Management System (PCMS), which will be enabled by TextileGenesis platform to record and verify every movement of U.S. cotton fiber. Incorporating the TextileGenesis blockchain solution will capture article-level transactions between the participants in the supply chain.

The Trust Protocol brand and its associate retail members will also be able to claim Protocol Credits on completion of cotton products. These are digital tokens representing the environmental metrics and sustainable practices adopted in the creation of the item. Pilot trials for the program will begin in June of this year and it will be fully launched by the beginning of 2022.