BCI membership

Raffaello Rossi has been a proud member of Better Cotton since 2021. Better Cotton has set itself the goal of improving cotton cultivation worldwide. The initiative focuses primarily on training cotton farmers worldwide to grow cotton more sustainably. At the same time, all brands participating in the initiative commit to increasing their share of sustainably grown cotton from the Better Cotton network.

Cotton from the Better Cotton Network is sourced through a mass-balancing system and is not physically traceable to the final product. Mass balancing is a common practice that is already used for Fair Trade cocoa or tea, for example. The reason for using mass balancing is to simplify the complex supply chain in cotton production. Furthermore, mass balancing ensures that the volume of Better Cotton sourced from brands is never greater than the volume of Better Cotton made available to the market. At the same time, it creates a cost-efficient system that benefits all stakeholders: The licensed Better Cotton cotton farmer from better farming, as well as downstream stakeholders such as yarn manufacturers or weavers, as they do not have to physically separate and/or create or verify costly certificates. Simplifying this system has simultaneously increased demand for Better Cotton cotton, which in turn benefits participating farmers. The more cotton Better Cotton sells, the more membership fees go towards supporting these farmers.

Therefore, buying Raffaello Rossi trousers with the Better Cotton hangtag supports the path to more sustainable cotton farming. And at Raffaello Rossi, when designing our collections, we make sure to continuously increase the proportion of cotton fabrics made with Better Cotton licensed cotton.

By 2026, we have set ourselves the goal of sourcing at least 50% of our cotton from the Better Cotton Network.

You can find out more about how it works and the mass balance system here:
https://bettercotton.org/what-we-do/connecting-supply-demand-chain-of-custody/