Do you know if your jeans were produced in sustainable and ethical ways?  Increasingly consumers will demand to know if they were, according to an interesting panel discussion at the second day (11 August, 2010) of the Australian Cotton Conference on the Gold Coast.

There is a strong interest among consumers in the sustainability and ethics of products, and emerging demands for the traceability of a product’s sustainability and ethical soundness through the entire supply chain.

Traceability would mean that, when you go to buy a pair of jeans, there would be a label certifying the jeans weren’t manufactured in a sweatshop and that the cotton was grown according to environmentally sound practices.  For further discussion, see for example:

Traceability program keeps cotton on track

There is definitely a buck to be made in helping companies trace their sustainability and ethical soundness, and judging from the interest in this topic at the conference, there are already a few people setting themselves up to fill this emerging market need.