+ What is YESS?

YESS: Yarn Ethically & Sustainably Sourced (YESS™) is a multi-stakeholder initiative created by Responsible Sourcing Network (RSN), to implement a due diligence approach to address the harm caused by forced labor involved in cotton production. It currently includes standards and assessment workbooks for cotton yarn spinners and fabric mills, and is developing training modules and a system to manage third-party auditors to conduct YESS assessments. It is also referred to as the “YESS Initiative.”

+ What is the objective of YESS?

YESS aims to eliminate forced labor from the cotton value chain by providing training to and managing the assessment of spinners and fabric mills that implement due diligence management systems to identify and avoid sourcing cotton that was produced with forced labor, and mitigate risks of forced labor when necessary. YESS applies the OECD Due Diligence Guidance for Responsible Supply Chains in the Garment and Footwear Sector (OECD Guidance), which has wide industry and government support, and is a proven method for companies to identify and address risks over time.

+ Who is behind YESS?

Patricia Jurewicz, CEO and Founder of RSN, saw the need for and created the YESS Initiative to develop, oversee, and facilitate the implementation of the YESS Standards. RSN is the holder of the YESS Standards and Assessment Workbooks, and their supporting documents and training modules.

RSN brought on Liz Muller of liz muller & partners, an expert in due diligence, to assist with the drafting of the YESS materials. liz muller & partners has extensive and relevant experience in a similar program in the minerals supply chain (Responsible Minerals Initiative), research in the cotton sector, and feasibility assessments at spinners and gins in four countries. Liz was also the first chairperson of Better Cotton Initiative (BCI).

+ What are the YESS Standards?

In 2019 RSN released version 1.0 YESS Standard for Spinning Mills (renamed from the YESS Cotton Standard), which outlines what actions YESS-conformant spinners must take to conduct due diligence on the cotton they source and the suppliers that provide that cotton. RSN also released the complementary YESS Assessment Workbook for Spinners to establish the criteria to be evaluated during an assessment of a spinner’s due diligence management systems and transactions. The existing YESS Standard and Workbook focus on spinners because of their importance in the cotton value chain as the first global mixing point, i.e., where cotton lint (or raw cotton) from multiple countries is typically blended together to make yarn. Spinners are, therefore, the key control point for identifying a cotton’s country of origin.

Recognizing that many brands and retailers are unable to identify all of the spinners in their value chains without the assistance of their fabric mills, RSN decided to also create and pilot a YESS Standard and Workbook for application at fabric mills (YESS Standard for Fabric Mills and YESS Workbook for Fabric Mills (also known as Textile Mills). By expanding the application of its YESS Standard and Workbook, YESS can assist cotton yarn spinners or cotton fabric mills with three main activities:

1. Establish a robust due diligence system to identify, prevent, mitigate, and avoid sourcing cotton or cotton yarn that was produced with forced labor.
2. Identify suppliers that pose a high risk of sourcing cotton, including cotton contained within cotton yarn, that has a high probability of being produced with forced labor.
3. Provide guidance on how spinners or fabric mills can work with their suppliers to determine the origin and riskiness of cotton lint or cotton yarn.

By supporting spinners or fabric mills with the above activities and assessing their conformance with the YESS Standard for Spinners or Fabric Mills, brands and retailers will have greater confidence that YESS-conformant spinners and fabric mills are doing their part to prevent, mitigate, and avoid forced labor involved in cotton production in their value chains.

+ What are the YESS Workbooks?

The YESS Assessment Workbooks include a series of standardized spreadsheets that can be used to capture all requirements set forth in the applicable YESS Standard during a YESS assessment (a different YESS Workbook exists for spinners and for fabric mills). In addition to capturing basic information about the spinner or fabric mill undergoing the assessment (auditee), the YESS Workbooks provide a framework for gathering information about the auditee’s cotton or yarn inputs, transactional information, and management systems. The YESS Workbooks also has a section in which to collate findings from an assessment along with any follow up items and any corrective actions.

+ What can brands do now to build capacity within spinners and mills to later adopt the YESS Standards?

Brands can begin to socialize due diligence and the standard through YESS online trainings available to YESS members here. Providing additional guidance given their local contexts and sourcing models will also be important. This will be best achieved through in-person trainings in the manufacturing regions. These trainings should include an explanation of the various forms of forced labor and ways they can be assessed or addressed. Please contact RSN if you are interested in remote or in-person trainings.

+ Now that the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) guidance and enforcement strategy have been released, how does the YESS framework specifically help importers comply with documentation requests?

YESS helps facilities implement a management system that includes ensuring cotton inputs and transaction documentation is inspected and aligned so as to validate the plausibility of the stated origin. Facilities can build off the management system to provide transaction-specific documents more readily, precisely, and efficiently.

Check out our blog post to read how YESS is aligned with the UFLPA due diligence requirements for importers.

Furthermore, the OECD Due Diligence Guidance and the YESS Standards require spinners and textile mills to cease sourcing from suppliers or origins where prevention or mitigation is not feasible, which is the current situation for cotton sourced from Xinjiang or any suppliers associated with Uyghur forced labor.

+ Do the YESS Standards align with (or differ from) the OECD Guidance?

The YESS Standards are intended to align with the OECD Guidance. The OECD Guidance specifies that all enterprises, regardless of size, have a responsibility to carry out due diligence in order to avoid and, if necessary, address the potential negative impacts of their direct activities or activities in their value chains. The OECD Guidance provides direction on how various enterprises in the garment and footwear sector may conduct due diligence.

Since YESS focuses on addressing forced labor risks in cotton production, the YESS Standards do not apply the OECD Guidance to a spinner’s or fabric mill’s own operations or to any other non-cotton farming parts of the value chain. The one exception to this is that YESS will look at the operations relating to sourcing or controlling cotton inputs inside the spinner or fabric mill.

YESS integrates the following six principles of OECD’s Guidance:

• Embed responsible business conduct in enterprise policy and management systems.
• Identify potential and actual harm of forced labor in cotton production in the enterprise’s supply chain.
• Cease, prevent, or mitigate forced labor in cotton production in the enterprise’s supply chain.
• Track (this is where the YESS Assessment fits in).
• Communicate.
• Provide for or cooperate in remediation when appropriate.

The YESS approach is similar to the Responsible Minerals Assurance Process (RMAP), managed by the Responsible Minerals Initiative (RMI) for conflict minerals, which is similarly aligned with the OECD Due Diligence Guidance for Responsible Mineral Supply Chains.

+ Why does YESS focus on spinning and fabric mills?

As mentioned above (What are the YESS Standards?), spinning mills are the point in the cotton value chain where lint from various origins around the world is mixed together and converted into yarn. By developing and implementing an industry-wide system that will encourage and support yarn spinners to identify, prevent, and mitigate forced labor in cotton sourcing, YESS will increase transparency and demand for responsible cotton, and reduce the demand for cotton produced with forced labor.

RSN made the decision to create a YESS Standard for Fabric Mills based on industry demand. Few brands are able to identify the spinners in their value chains, but many can identify—or have relationships with—fabric mills. The YESS Standard for Fabric Mills will help mills identify spinners that are, or are not, more likely to source cotton with a high risk of forced labor in its production, and, as necessary, conduct further due diligence on high-risk value chains.

+ What do spinners or fabric mills have to do to comply with the YESS Standards?

A cotton spinner or fabric mill that voluntarily chooses to participate in the YESS Initiative will be expected to develop a responsible sourcing policy and supporting procedures and management systems to avoid purchasing cotton that has a high-risk of forced labor in its production. The policy will need to include sections on risk management, adherence to the relevant YESS Standard, and supplier expectations. The policy will need to be enforced by a robust management system that tracks information flows and feedback records. With this framework, the spinner or fabric mill will assess the source of cotton inputs it receives to avoid sourcing cotton that has a high risk of forced labor in its production.

Additionally, YESS has developed assessment tools that will list each requirement or criteria to which a spinner or fabric mill must meet. Once a full YESS Program is in place, participating spinners or fabric mills will be assessed for conformance with the applicable YESS Standard once a year. A trained third-party auditor will assess the spinner’s or fabric mill’s due diligence management system for cotton inputs produced with forced labor. The assessment will include an onsite inspection of the facility, employee interviews, inspection of procedures and transaction documentation, and other activities.

The YESS Standard and Workbook for Spinners can be found here; the YESS Standard and Workbook for Textile Mills is under development and is expected to be available in early 2022.

+ What are the incentives for spinners and fabric mills to meet and undergo an assessment using the YESS Standards?

As legislation and regulations to implement human rights due diligence and/or address forced labor in value chains increase in consumer markets, brands are responding by requiring actors within their entire value chains to implement due diligence measures. Some brands have experienced having their shipments detained per the U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s (US CBP) Withhold Release Orders (WROs) on cotton or cotton products from Xinjiang, China or Turkmenistan until they can prove that the shipments do not contain cotton harvested with forced labor. The YESS Standards outline the elements of a strong due diligence management system based on the OECD Guidance to avoid sourcing cotton that involved forced labor. The YESS Standards are designed to integrate and strengthen systems commonly implemented at spinners and fabric mills and enable them to meet brands’ requirements through aligned standards—and one annual assessment—that would be recognized industry-wide and among all enforcement agencies.

+ How are "high-risk countries for cotton lint (raw cotton) production" determined?

Spinning and fabric mills are responsible for defining what constitutes high-risk countries of origin for cotton lint and cotton yarn they source using credible and current resources and criteria. As an example of what a mill could write as a policy, RSN has created a YESS Sample Procedure to Identify High-risk Origins for Cotton Lint. The YESS sample procedure references the most recent versions of the Global Slavery Index, United States (U.S.) Bureau of International Labor Affairs’ List of Goods Produced by Child Labor or Forced Labor (List of Goods), the U.S. Department of State’s Trafficking in Persons Report (TIP Report), and Fragile State Index’s Indicator for Human Rights and the Rule of Law and Uneven Economic Development.

The sample procedure is a minimum recommendation for what the mills should implement. YESS will review and revise this sample procedure periodically.

+ Why is Syria excluded from YESS’s high-risk cotton production list?

Syria's risk of harm from its cotton sector stems from conflict, not from forced labor (“conflict cotton”). Since the YESS Standard is only focused on forced labor, Syria has not been determined to be a high-risk country under YESS at this time. Syria has been added to the Emerging Risk List on the YESS website so that it can be periodically reviewed and changed accordingly.

+ What is the scope of YESS?

YESS focuses on the following activities:

• Building capacity and support to implement a risk-based due diligence approach
• Strengthening management systems and material control systems
• Ensuring reconciliation of all cotton inputs within the facility
• Annually assessing if spinners and fabric mills are conformant with the YESS Standard to avoid, prevent, or mitigate cotton that was produced with forced labor

YESS does not address or conduct any of these activities:

• Look at all human rights or labor rights issues in cotton fields
• Identify and address labor conditions inside a cotton processing facility (ginning, spinning, weaving, or knitting)
• Create a check-the-box audit or a code of conduct
• Certify a product or a facility

+ Why does YESS only address forced labor and no other decent work standards?

RSN has a long history of working with global apparel brands and other stakeholders to end state imposed forced labor in cotton production. YESS expands that effort by identifying and addressing forced labor in any country determined to have a high risk of forced labor in its cotton production (as defined by the ILO’s conventions and indicators). Additionally, brands have expressed interest in a solution addressing forced labor in their cotton value chains due to growing forced labor-specific legislation and regulation, and value chain disruptions (e.g., detained shipments by US CBP). With this in mind, YESS will enable engagement within the upstream segment of value chains, which could, in turn, be expanded to address other decent work issues in the future.

+ Does YESS provide certification documents that can be used to show chain of custody for a full cotton value chain?

No. YESS does not provide transaction-level chain of custody assurances, or a product or facility certification, and it does not cover the entire value chain. YESS provides an assessment of a spinner or textile mill’s due diligence management system with a focus on their upstream value chain. A YESS assessment of a spinner or fabric mill will include an inspection of documents of a representative sample of all transactions during the assessment period (typically a year). The details contained within each of these documents (e.g. material weight, shipment date, shipper, recipient) will be triangulated across these and other associated commercial documents such as invoices, letters of credit or proof of payment to validate the plausibility of the cotton’s claimed origin. These inspections will also serve as a way to ensure the management system is working as intended.

+ Does YESS assess for forced labor inside spinning mills or fabric mills?

No. The aim of the YESS Initiative is to eliminate forced labor at cotton farms by helping spinners and fabric mills develop and implement strong management systems to support responsible sourcing policies and practices. A spinner or fabric mill that meets the applicable YESS Standard should be in a better position to deliver and manage expectations set by other initiatives to assess and verify factory labor conditions.

+ Does YESS compete with SLCP?

RSN is a signatory to the Social & Labor Convergence Program (SLCP), and a contributor to the forced labor section of the SLCP data tool. Since the SLCP data tool focuses on the labor conditions within a facility, and not how materials are sourced, the two efforts complement one another.

+ Does YESS duplicate the work of other initiatives, including Better Cotton Initiative (BCI), CottonConnect, Cotton Made in Africa (CMiA), Fairtrade, and others?

No. The main focus of the above initiatives (which YESS refers to as “farm-level schemes”) is on training, assessing, and working directly with cotton farmers (and gins, in some instances). YESS concentrates on building the capacity of yarn spinners and fabric mills to develop and implement sufficiently robust and effective due diligence management systems to avoid introducing cotton produced with forced labor into their value chains.

+ Will YESS consider cotton produced with farm-level schemes like BCI, CottonConnect, CMiA, Fairtrade, or others as low-risk cotton even if it was produced in a high-risk country?

YESS requires extra due diligence for all cotton that originates in a high-risk country. The farm-level schemes need to undergo an evaluation to determine which ones are sufficient to ensure their cotton does not pose a high risk of involving forced labor during its production. As of the date of publication of these FAQs (3 March, 2021), no farm-level scheme has yet to be fully evaluated to meet a YESS determination of low-risk in a high-risk country. Refer to the YESS website and an updated version of the FAQs for future updates.

+ Is recycled cotton addressed under either YESS Standard?

Both of the YESS Standards exempt recycled post-consumer fiber from the determination of the country or farm-level origin. Cotton used in the recycled yarn is in its first life cycle (i.e. virgin) in either lint, yarn, or fabric form, is subject to due diligence under YESS.

+ How will YESS be scaled?

Throughout 2021 RSN will manage a multi-stakeholder YESS Implementation Working Group that will determine the most appropriate way to scale YESS, coordinate with other initiatives, and integrate it into the industry. Sub-group categories include: Forced Labor Assessments/High-risk Regions, Assessments/Auditors, Continuous Improvement/Capacity Building, Governance and Collaboration, Financial Sustainability/Scalability, and Technology. Ambassador-level sponsors will be eligible to participate in the YESS Implementation Working Group.

+ How can a brand or retailer support YESS?

RSN invites brands and retailers to advance the YESS Initiative in 2021 and take advantage of YESS’s online trainings and other benefits by becoming a YESS Ambassador or YESS Supporter. Click here for more information about YESS sponsorship.