Cotton supply at DECATHLON

At DECATHLON, we design and manufacture our products since 1986.
Given cotton is used in a large number of our products, it’s our responsibility to take a scrupulous look at its origin and its impact, as well as explain it to you!

Our commitment to sourcing cotton from more sustainable origins

Although it's a natural produce, cotton farming has an environmental and social impact.
These impacts are mainly linked to the huge amounts of water required to grow cotton. They are also linked to the use of pesticides, which impact biodiversity, contaminate the soils, and also affect the people that grow and harvest it.

To play a part in reducing these impacts, we are committed to getting our supplies through three more sustainable sources:organically grown cotton, BCI (Better Cotton Initiative) cotton, and recycled cotton. Cotton from sustainable sources today represents 95% of the cotton used at DECATHLON.

Better cotton

We started supporting Better Cotton in 2012. The recommendations supplied by this organisation enable us today to source cotton that reduces the environmental impact and integrates a wide range of social measures during its farming. Click here to find out more about the BCI.

The BCI initiative is sometimes controversial because it authorises the use of chemical inputs in cotton growing. It, however, enables us to progress towards our objective: 100% of cotton from more sustainable sources.

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Organically grown cotton

Organic farming consists of not using chemical fertiliser to grow produce. It preserves biodiversity, soil fertility and reduces the risk of groundwater contamination. And lastly, it ensures workers don't come into contact with pesticides, which are bad for health.

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Recycled cotton

It is possible to create new cotton fibres by retrieving clothing having reached the end of its life cycle or manufacturing fabric offcuts. It is known as recycled cotton. However, to preserve its durability, these recycled fibres are always mixed with virgin cotton, in other words, which is new.This method, nevertheless, greatly reduces the impact linked to conventional cotton farming because the impact has already taken place.

Going further

We are well aware that our actions have an impact on sports users' playground. We play an active part in the sport. We are subsequently duty-bound to put in place sustainable solutions to continue providing products with technical features that are more environmentally friendly. Today organic and recycled cotton form part of our eco-design approach.

The group aims to collect and guarantee the reliability of data related to the use and processing of raw materials throughout its product manufacturing chain. The goal is to achieve robust traceability on the origin and composition of these materials by 2026.

To do this, DECATHLON teams are growing and each industrial process defined its priorities and its own traceability policy in 2023. All of the work underway will make it possible to deliver the information expected by future European regulations (EU Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation, EU Deforestation-free Regulation, etc.).

Organic cotton, recycled cotton, conventional cotton or ordinary cotton?

Where does cotton come from? What are the disadvantages of cotton? Organic cotton or Oeko-Tex? We give you the facts, straight.

Transparency

Polyester, polyamide, polyester, cotton... recycled cotton, cellulose fibre, Lyocell or even solution dyed... all you need to know about Eco-design!

Why does it take so much water to make a cloth?

The production of a single T-shirt requires more thant 2,000 litres of water, the equivalent of 70 showers. How do we actually achieve such volumes?

Support our suppliers with the decarbonisation of production

Because the use of renewable energy sources is essential to drastically reducing the CO2 impact.