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In June 2021 Ethical Consumer viewed Amazon's website for a cotton sourcing policy. The company owned several clothing brands using cotton.

The following statements relating to cotton sourcing were found: “In 2019 we signed the Responsible Sourcing Network’s public Cotton Pledge to not source cotton from Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan until the pervasive use of government-mandated forced labor is stopped".

The company also stated: "We will not allow products in the Amazon Store that are made using forced, indentured, or child labor, including products prohibited by U.S. Customs and Border Protection; by factories deemed ineligible under the Bangladesh Accord or Bangladesh Alliance; or with cotton sourced from Turkmenistan or Uzbekistan."

Nothing could be found on GM cotton.

According to Anti-Slavery international (ASI) website viewed by Ethical Consumer in August 2018, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan were two of the world’s largest exporters of cotton, and every year their governments forcibly mobilised over one million citizens to grow and harvest cotton. As Amazon had committed not to sourcing cotton from Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, this was considered to be a positive policy addressing a workers’ rights issue.

According to the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications (ISAAA), a non-profit pro biotech organisation, genetically modified cotton accounted for 80% of cotton grown in 2017. Due to the prevalence of GM cotton in cotton supply chains and the lack of any evidence that the company avoided it, it was assumed that some of the company's cotton products contained some GM material. As a result it lost half a mark under the Controversial Technologies category.