The White Company joins Cotton Recycling Initiative as B Corp status pushes circular goals

As sustainability imperatives tighten across the retail landscape, The White Company, the British home and lifestyle brand known for its monochrome minimalism, has taken a new step in its post-B Corp journey. The 30-year-old retailer announced its participation in the Cotton Lives On recycling programme during its inaugural Sustainability Week, reflecting a broader push in UK retail to curb textile waste and demonstrate ESG credentials beyond rhetoric.

The move aligns The White Company with a growing cohort of UK fashion and lifestyle brandsm including Whistles, Anthropologie, ME+EM, and Bianca Saunders participating in the initiative, which aims to repurpose unwearable cotton textiles into roll mats for individuals facing homelessness. Since its UK launch in 2022, the Cotton Lives Onprogramme, created by Cotton Council International and Cotton Incorporated, has collected nearly 8,000kg of cotton, equivalent to around 56,000 old T-shirts, and produced over 100 mats. Each mat uses approximately 6.4kg of shredded cotton fibres.

The White Company’s internal pilot has already yielded 35kg of discarded cotton from its office network, contributing to the production of six roll mats. While modest in scale, the gesture underscores a strategic focus on circularity that is gaining traction among middle-market brands. Speaking on the brand’s longer-term ambitions, Ethics & Sustainability Manager Alex Barnett cited “transitioning to a more circular future” as a top priority, particularly given the company’s reliance on cotton-rich materials.

Notably, the announcement arrives less than a year after The White Company achieved B Corp certification, an increasingly influential signal of sustainability credibility in retail. Only around 1,500 UK businesses currently hold B Corp status, and within fashion, the designation remains rare. The certification process, which assesses governance, supply chain ethics, and social impact, has become a competitive differentiator as consumer expectations shift and regulatory pressures around greenwashing intensify.

The Cotton Lives On programme also speaks to a growing emphasis on end-of-life solutions in the cotton supply chain, a fibre that comprises nearly a quarter of global textile production yet contributes significantly to landfill waste when not managed sustainably. While cotton’s natural biodegradability gives it an advantage over synthetics, large-scale recycling infrastructure remains underdeveloped, making partnerships such as this a meaningful, if incremental, step toward systemic change.