# Verify Cotton Provenance in Textile Manufacturing

> The United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) conducted a blockchain pilot with fashion brand Stella McCartney and cotton supplier SÖKTAS to trace a garment through the supply chain. The project verified the origin and processing steps of a cotton jersey T-shirt using tamper-proof digital records. This initiative demonstrates how transparent sourcing standards can advance sustainability across the global fashion industry.

**Sector:** Secondary sector · **Industry:** Textile and clothing industry · **Organisation:** United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), Stella McCartney, SÖKTAS · **Maturity level:** Pilot

Canonical URL: https://www.sapientblock.com/en/use-cases/united-nations-economic-commission-for-europe-baumwollherkunft-textilproduktion

## Documentation status

- **Project status:** Pilot
- **Evidence:** Evidence medium
- **Editorial review:** pending

## Description

The United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), in collaboration with Stella McCartney and SÖKTAS, has demonstrated how the origin of textile fibres can be fully controlled. In the highly fragmented fashion industry, it is often difficult for companies to trace under what conditions the raw materials used were actually obtained. The blockchain serves here as a shared, immutable ledger in which all processing steps from cotton harvesting to the finished garment are bindingly documented.

The pilot project was developed within the framework of the UNECE initiative for sustainability and circularity in the clothing industry. Together with the British fashion brand Stella McCartney and the Turkish textile producer SÖKTAS, the entire lifecycle of a cotton jersey T-shirt was mapped. All intermediate stages, from raw material cultivation through spinning to cutting, stored evidence of origin and quality criteria in the blockchain. By using uniform UN data standards, the solution is intended to be scalable for other global suppliers as well. Although no final figures on productivity increases are yet available, the project is regarded as an important practical proof of feasibility for regulatory transparency requirements.

## Benefits

- Increased evidential security towards regulatory authorities and customers
- Simplified exchange of evidence between suppliers and brands
- Improved risk management in deeply nested supply networks
- Reliable information about the ecological origin of clothing
- Greater trust in brand promises regarding sustainability
- Seamless verification of fibre origin along the production chain
- Reduction of risks related to greenwashing
- Standardised interfaces based on UN guidelines
- Less manual effort in plausibility checks of delivery documents
- Central overview of verified supplier documents

## Challenges

- Willingness of smaller suppliers to provide granular production data
- Integration effort into existing inventory management and ERP systems
- High coordination effort when involving all upstream operations
- Dependence on correct initial recording of physical raw material quantities
- Training time for new platforms and UN-specific data models

## Technology foundation

The use case is based on the UNECE blockchain reference framework for sustainable supply chains in the clothing sector, where evidence across production stages is validated decentrally and immutably recorded.

## Sources

- [Traceability and Blockchain Technology](https://www.stellamccartney.com/us/en/sustainability/traceability-and-block-chain-technology.html)
- [UNECE blockchain pilot for cotton paves the way for more sustainable fashion](https://unece.org/circular-economy/news/unece-blockchain-pilot-cotton-paves-way-more-sustainable-fashion)