The science of forensic chemistry, familiar to millions of viewers of crime dramas on TV and film, is playing a key role today in tracing the source of products all the way back to their origin.

That’s a crucial capability, at the time when consumers are displaying growing concern that their buying behavior might be supporting unethical labor practices and environmental degradation.

The technique is based on the presence of various chemicals that are found in raw materials all over the world, but vary in concentration due to minute differences in climate and environmental conditions. Each location yields a unique chemical origin “fingerprint.”

The science has proved useful in achieving traceability across numerous types of products, including food, pharmaceuticals and cotton. That last one is a major issue today, given the controversy over China’s treatment of ethnic Uyghurs in Xinjiang Province, which supplies an estimated 20% of the world’s cotton.

Forensic chemistry can trade the source of an agricultural product back to a specific farm or orchard, says Kate Jones, senior science advisor with Oritain, a specialist in product verification. For many of the company’s clients, however, it’s enough to know the originating country or region. Unlike the science of human fingerprinting, “we don’t have to get down to millions of data points,” she says. “We’re creating a reference baseline for a geographic area.”

Use of the science for tracing cotton is still a work in progress, Jones says, although in recent years “the database has grown considerably.” Today, Oritain claims to cover more than 96% of the world’s cotton-growing areas with its tracing tools.

Traceability has to run through every stage of a global supply chain, which can be frustratingly opaque, given the number of players and transformations that a given product undergoes. “Everybody’s beholden to the authenticity of what they get from suppliers,” Jones says. “Manufacturers want to make sure.”

Doing good for good’s sake is an obvious mandate. But for profit-oriented businesses, efforts to uphold ethical supply chain are largely driven by two factors: regulatory pressure and the attitude of consumers. Do the latter really care about where their products come from, or are they primarily concerned with price and convenience? And is that changing?

Jones says consumers are indeed becoming more aware of product origin today, even if the information provided to them at point of purchase remains extremely limited. (“Made in China” is as far as most apparel manufacturers are willing to go in labeling right now.) She cites studies finding that three-quarters of consumers would stop buying from brands if they knew their products to be unsustainably sourced. (Or so they say, when asked in surveys.) And certain clothing brands such as Patagonia base their very identity on the maintenance of ethical supply chains.

Jones says Oritain is working to increase its database and applications to cover additional products, including coffee, beef and timber. “Ethical sourcing science can be applied in so many different ways,” she adds. Additional possibilities include the tracing of rare earth metals and other minerals that go into high-tech products, although the company’s focus at the moment is on cotton and other fibers such as cashmere, wool and mohair.
 Forensic chemistry can become even more powerful when combined with technologies such as artificial intelligence for analyzing data, and blockchain ledgers for authenticating and recording product origin.

The science will continue to evolve. “As we’ve gotten more into commodities, we’re getting better at understanding what they look like in the supply chain,” Jones says. Leather, for example, is heavily manipulated with chemicals during processing, and separating all of them out accurately can be a challenge.

The technology is moving ahead both in terms of breadth of application and sophistication. “We’re creating new and novel chemistry methods that weren’t available when we started,” Jones says.

NEXT: Can China get around cotton origin testing?