How to prepare for the Better Cotton CoC 1.0 assessment?

Better Cotton CoC 1.0 was launched in May 2023 and came into effect in October. Starting from May 2025, all organizations seeking to trade better cotton should comply with the requirements of Better Cotton CoC 1.0. So, how should organizations prepare for this assessment?

1. Organizations and evaluators should communicate to arrange on-site supervision and assessment. Assessors should reconfirm the planned visit date with the company at least two weeks in advance. Third party inspectors should copy the information of Better Cotton staff to relevant organizations when arranging assessment. If the assessment request is not responded to, they should contact the Better Cotton team.

2. Assessment should be conducted when the organization has production activities. The evaluation workflow is shown in the following figure.

Organizational category

Class A: Such organizations should register on the Better Cotton platform and completerelevant online BCP training modules. This type of organization will be placed under a typical Better Cotton monitoring and oversight program and will require an assessment within 3 years.

Class B: Such organizations should register on the Better Cotton platform and completerelevant online training modules. Within 12 months after BCP registration, the organization should contact an approved third-party Verifier to arrange an assessment based on Better Cotton CoC 1.0.

Class C: Such organizations should contact approved third-party Verifier for assessment based on Better Cotton CoC 1.0.

3. For existing organizations in the CoC program, if the organization does not respond to Better Cotton or third-party inspectors after receiving 3 reminder letters and 1 phone call, the access rights of BCP users will be temporarily closed until the organization responds to the assessment request.

If the organization initially applies to join the CoC program, its application will be suspended until it responds to the assessment request. If no response is received after 30 daysof notification, the organization's application will be cancelled. At that time, the organization needs to resubmit the registry and restart the application process.

4. Evaluators should develop an assessment plan and use the latest version of CoC standards, reports, bound documents, and provided data to prepare and execute the evaluation. The evaluation results should be reported according to the latest version of the report template. If you have any questions, please check the Better Cotton website or contact the Better Cotton supply chain team.

5. When preparing for the evaluation, the evaluator should confirm the language information used locally. If the evaluator/evaluator team does not use the local language, appropriate, independent, and impartial translation services must be arranged.

6. During the preparation of the assessment (and before conducting on-site inspections), the following information should be verified with BCI:

-Better cotton member or BCP user identity

-BCP account type

-Training attendance in the past 12 months

-Other past information