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!
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.
Since 2020, 100% of the cotton used by DECATHLON has come from alternative sources. It should be noted that BCI (Better Cotton Initiative) cotton remains the type most widely used in the manufacture of the company’s products. Since 2024, the Group has been working to diversify its supply and explore new labels (US Trust Protocol, Organic, Regenagri), to better control the risks associated with growing cotton and to reduce its environmental impact.
At the same time, DECATHLON continues investments to develop the integration of recycled cotton fibres (pre- and post consumer).
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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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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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.
DECATHLON is continuing its work on the mechanical recycling of cotton. In 2024, the Group sold 113,000 T-shirts from its Men’s Domyos Essentials 500 line containing 30% post-consumer waste that was collected, sorted, disassembled and recycled in Europe. These sales are the result of research and development, together with partnerships conducted by the design teams with European collectors, sorters, recyclers and spinners between 2022 and 2023. In 2025, DECATHLON will extend its use of recycled cotton from post-consumer products to new sports product lines.
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.).
