Transcript

Good morning.

This week, fashion's Digital Product Passport story stopped being about a QR code.

It became about who pays for a product after it has been sold.

Four developments. One clear conclusion.

First, a new analysis published by Reuters shows the scale of the problem.

Less than one percent of textile waste is currently recycled into new textiles, while global textile waste is expected to increase by more than forty percent by 2035.

According to modelling by ReHubs and Boston Consulting Group, Europe may need between eight and eleven billion euros in capital investment to reach just fifteen percent textile-to-textile recycling by 2035.

The technology is developing. The economic system around it is not ready.

Second, European Union law requires every Member State to establish an Extended Producer Responsibility scheme for textiles and footwear by the 17th of April 2028.

Producers will finance the collection, sorting, reuse and recycling of the products they place on each national market.

Their contributions will be based on product weight and, where appropriate, quantity. The fees will then be adjusted using relevant ecodesign requirements.

In other words, product sustainability data is beginning to have a direct financial value.

Third, the prohibition on destroying unsold clothing and footwear already applies to large companies.

From February 2027, businesses must also use a standard European format to disclose the unsold products they discard.

What happens to a product after production can no longer remain invisible.

Fourth, the European Digital Product Passport Registry is now live and undergoing testing before the first mandatory battery passports arrive in February 2027.

Businesses can register product identifiers through the Registry interface or connect directly through its API.

But registration is not the same as verification.

A registration record can prove that a passport exists. It cannot prove that every environmental, material or recycling claim inside the passport is true.

The business placing the product on the market still owns that responsibility.

And that brings us to this week's conclusion.

The Digital Product Passport is becoming the information layer connecting product design, compliance, waste fees, sorting and recycling.

Businesses that treat it as a webpage or QR code added at the end will have started in the wrong place.

The real work begins with the product data, where it comes from, what evidence supports it, who is responsible for it, and how it stays accurate.

The question is no longer:

"Who can generate our passport?"

The question is:

"Can we prove our product well enough for the systems now forming around it?"

That is this week's Digital Product Passport briefing from yellow3 Research Intelligence.