Fashion & textiles
A garment that can say what it is made of
Textiles are an early ESPR priority group, and the data the act will ask for — fibre composition, origin, durability, end-of-life — is the same data that makes resale, repair and take-back economically viable.
- Instrument
- ESPR (EU) 2024/1781
- Status
- Early priority group
- Carrier
- QR or NFC care label
GS1 Digital Link
id.circuleid.com/01/09506000134352
- Product
- Merino Crew Knit
- GTIN
- 09506000134352
- Material composition
- 82% RWS merino · 18% recycled PA
- Carbon footprint
- 14.2 kg CO₂e · ISO 14067
- Recycled content
- 18.4% by mass
- End-of-life route
- Take-back · fibre-to-fibre
Illustrative passport record. Field coverage follows the ESPR delegated act for the product group.
Definition
What is a Digital Product Passport for textiles?
A textile Digital Product Passport is a machine-readable record of a garment's fibre composition, production origin, durability, substances of concern and end-of-life routes, reached by scanning a care label. Textiles are an early priority group under the EU Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation, with requirements set by a delegated act.
The commercial case usually arrives before the legal one. The composition and provenance data the ESPR will require is the same data a resale platform, a repair partner and a fibre-to-fibre recycler each need before they will take the garment.
The data
One record, four audiences
| Data | Regulator | Customer and resale | Recycler |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fibre composition | Substantiates the composition claim on the label | Sets resale value and washing behaviour | Determines whether fibre-to-fibre recycling is possible |
| Production origin | Supports due diligence and country-of-origin claims | Answers the provenance question directly | Rarely used |
| Durability and care | Evidence for a durability requirement | Extends garment life, reduces returns | Indicates remaining fibre quality |
| Substances of concern | REACH-SCIP declaration for the article | Not usually surfaced | Governs safe processing |
| Repair and take-back | Evidence of an end-of-life route | Turns a repair into a second sale | Routes the garment to the right stream |
Capabilities
Built for how apparel actually moves
Model, batch or item identity
Start at model level across the catalogue and move to item level where resale or authentication pays for it.
Supplier-signed composition
Spinners and mills declare fibre content themselves, signed with their own keys, so provenance survives the audit.
Certification evidence
GOTS, RWS, GRS and OEKO-TEX certificates attached to the article they cover, with their validity dates.
Repair history
Authorised repairs recorded against the garment identity, so a repaired item is documented rather than suspect.
Fibre-to-fibre routing
Composition and trim data released to recyclers, which is what decides whether a garment can be reprocessed at all.
Care-label carriers
GS1 Digital Link on a woven QR or an NFC thread, resolving to the right view without an app.
Implementation
From a PLM export to a scannable garment
- 01
Map the PLM
Composition, care and supplier fields map onto the passport model. The gap report tells you which fields the collection is missing before it goes into production.
- 02
Onboard mills and spinners
Tier-2 and tier-3 suppliers submit composition and certification evidence, signed by them. No re-keying, and no unattributed spreadsheet rows.
- 03
Attach the carrier
A GS1 Digital Link QR on the care label, or an NFC thread where the garment justifies it, resolving to the passport with no app.
- 04
Connect resale and repair
Resale platforms and repair partners read the passport through the API, and write repairs and resales back to the same identity.
Answers
Frequently asked questions
When will textiles need a Digital Product Passport?
Textiles are named in the ESPR (EU) 2024/1781 working plan as an early priority product group. The requirement arrives through a delegated act specific to textiles, which sets the field list and allows roughly eighteen months before enforcement. The act had not been adopted at the time of writing, so the date is not yet fixed.
What does a textile passport have to contain?
The delegated act will confirm the field list, but the direction is consistent: fibre composition by mass, country of the main production stages, durability and care, substances of concern, repairability, and end-of-life routes. CirculeID maps your data to a CIRPASS-aligned model so a change to the field list is a mapping change, not a re-implementation.
How do you prove fibre composition down the supply chain?
By making the party that knows assert it. A spinner declares fibre content, a mill declares the fabric, and each declaration is issued as a Verifiable Credential signed with that supplier’s own key. The brand can then show an auditor who claimed what, rather than a spreadsheet cell with no provenance.
Does a passport actually help resale and repair?
It removes the two things that break resale at scale: not knowing what a garment is made of, and not being able to prove it is genuine. A passport that resolves from a care label gives a resale platform the composition, the care history and an authenticity check without the original receipt.
We have thousands of SKUs. Does every one need its own passport?
Not necessarily at item level. Passports can be issued per model, per batch or per item, and textiles are usually model or batch level to begin with, moving to item level where resale, repair or authentication justifies it. The identity model is a decision you make once, and CirculeID supports all three.
Next step
Start with one collection
Send us a PLM export for a single drop. We will show you the passport it produces and the fields the delegated act is likely to still want.