Digital Product Passports for Textiles: What Brands Should Do Now
By The Velocity Wear Team
The direction of travel in the EU is that physical products will carry a digital record — accessible from the item itself — describing what it is made of, where it came from, and what can be done with it at end of life. Textiles are among the priority categories. The implementing detail and the dates are still settling, so treat any specific deadline you read, including in this piece, as something to verify for your own market.
What a product passport actually is
Strip away the terminology and it is a data record attached to a product, reachable by scanning something on the garment — a QR code, a data carrier in the label. Scanning it returns structured information about that item rather than a marketing page.
- **Material composition,** including the proportion of recycled content where claimed.
- **Origin and supply chain steps,** to some level of granularity.
- **Durability and care information,** in a structured rather than free-text form.
- **End-of-life guidance** — repairability, recyclability, take-back routes.
- **Substances of concern,** where present.
Why this is harder than it sounds
The technology is trivial. Any brand can put a QR code on a label this afternoon. The difficulty is that most brands cannot currently answer the questions the passport asks.
Ask a small apparel brand which mill produced the fabric in their hoodie, what the actual recycled content is as a percentage, and which dyehouse finished it, and most cannot say. Not because anyone is hiding it — because the information was never requested, and it stops at the garment supplier. A passport regime turns that gap from an inconvenience into a compliance problem.
What to start doing now, regardless of dates
- 1**Ask for composition in writing, per style.** Not "cotton blend" — the actual percentages, and the fabric weight in GSM. Keep it with the order record.
- 2**Ask where the fabric came from,** at least to mill and country. Your manufacturer knows even if you have never asked.
- 3**Record it per production run, not per style.** Fabric sources change between runs. A record that does not say which run it describes will not satisfy anyone.
- 4**Keep certificates rather than claims.** If a fabric is certified organic or recycled, get the certificate reference and the scope, because a certificate covering the yarn is not a certificate covering your garment.
- 5**Store it somewhere durable.** A spreadsheet you keep is better than a system you plan to buy.
The upside worth noticing
This is usually framed as burden, but the same data is what lets a brand make specific claims instead of vague ones. "Sustainably made" is now a legally risky thing to print. "320 GSM, 80% organic cotton, certified to a named standard, woven in a named country" is not a claim at all — it is a specification, and it is far more persuasive to the kind of customer who cares.
Brands that already know their supply chain will find compliance a formatting exercise. Brands that do not will find it a discovery project. The difference is entirely in whether the questions were asked at order time.
What to ask a manufacturer
Ask whether they can supply composition, fabric origin and certification references per run, and whether they will keep those records against your account. We hold this per order because it is the only stage at which the information is easy to capture — reconstructing it two years later, after the fabric lot has gone, is close to impossible.
