Know what EPR, GCD, DPP, PEF mean?
The most important acronyms in EU politics affecting fashion business and communication and an invitation to our first-ever workshop!
Welcome to The Crisps–your weekly newsletter on anti-greenwashing and honest fashion communication. In this issue, we look at some of the most important acronyms of EU politics affecting fashion and its communication. And make sure not to miss our next issue where we will look at even more acronyms such as ESPR, CSRD, UCPD, CSDD, and LCA.
The last few years have seen some developments in policies and regulations on EU level that also affect our work in the fashion and textile sector. Some of them are already implemented, others are still in the proposal stage. What they have in common: All of them have acronyms that only the extra pros know by heart.
If you can’t remember what GCD, EPR or CSRP stand for, don’t worry. We’re about to change that! This issue is YOUR cheat sheet to finally tell those acronyms apart, know what concepts they entail, and how they will affect the business and communication of fashion. In this issue, we’re covering these:
EGD, CEAP, SSCT, GCD, PEF, EPR and DPP.
(Next week we will look at ESPR, CSRD, UCPD, CS3D, and LCA.)
But we’ve got more up our sleeves: To end the year on an educational note, we’re giving our first-ever workshop on anti-greenwashing communication. Mark your calendar on December, 20th at 5 pm CET. The hour-long workshop is FREE for our pro subscribers and costs 25€ for everyone else.
PS: If you’re a pro subscriber and want to take part, please send us a quick email to thecrisps@substack.com
Please note: We’re taking a little break over the European winter holidays. The last issue of this year will be published on December, 14th. We will be back in the first week of January 2024.
EGD – European Green Deal
In December 2019 the EU presented the European Green Deal, a plan to make Europe the first climate-neutral continent by 2050. The initiative set environmental targets as a basis for directives and regulations that cover several sectors such as energy, transport, agriculture as well as textiles.
To achieve their goals, the EU set key objectives that include a substantial reduction of net greenhouse gas emissions. By 2030 the EU aims to achieve a 55 percent decrease compared to 1990.12
Some of the main building blocks of the European Green Deal are the Circular Economy Action Plan and the EU Strategy for Sustainable and Circular Textiles (which we explain in more detail below).
What does it have to do with communication? The European Green Deal is the overarching plan to tackle the climate crisis on an economic, environmental, and societal level in Europe. Part of it is also consumer protection which the EU wants to increase by “enabling sustainable choices and ending greenwashing”.3 Here’s where the EU Green Claims Directive (the directive tackling greenwashing) comes into play which will have a direct effect on your entire communication. We will get into more details further below.
CEAP – Circular Economy Action Plan
Adopted by the European Commission in March 2020, the Circular Economy Action Plan (CEAP) serves as a crucial element of the European Green Deal. According to the European Parliament, “the EU’s transition to a circular economy will reduce pressure on natural resources and will create sustainable growth and jobs. It is also a prerequisite to achieve the EU’s 2050 climate neutrality target and to halt biodiversity loss.”
The Circular Economy Action Plan outlines initiatives and proposes new rules to “make almost all physical goods on the EU market more friendly to the environment, circular, and energy efficient throughout their whole lifecycle from the design phase through to daily use, repurposing and end-of-life.”4 It targets design processes, promotes circular economy practices, encourages sustainable consumption, and emphasizes waste prevention. Efforts are concentrated on resource-intensive sectors with high circularity potential such as electronics, vehicles, packaging, and textiles to ensure an efficient use of resources within the EU economy.
The CEAP also includes the EU Strategy for Sustainable and Circular Textiles–a set of actions to make textiles more durable, repairable, reusable, and recyclable.5 Further the plan wants to tackle fast fashion, and textile waste and ensure that the production takes place in respect of social rights. This week, the EU agreed on banning the destruction of unsold clothing and footwear6 which will confront brands with their habit of overproducing.
What does it have to do with communication? The Circular Economy Action Plan is a building block of the European Green Deal. With it also comes the EU Green Claims Directive which is directly affecting the environmental communication brands put out.
SSCT – EU Strategy for Sustainable and Circular Textiles
To implement the commitments of the European Green Deal and the Circular Economy Action Plan (CEAP), the EU has developed a specific strategy for the textile sector called the EU Strategy for Sustainable and Circular Textiles. (Btw SSCT is not an official acronym used by the EU press office but has been used by others to talk about the strategy for sustainable and circular textiles – that’s why it’s still included in our list.)
The strategy looks at the entire lifecycle of textile products from how fabrics are made to how we consume textiles and how they are disposed of. The strategy proposes actions to change the production and consumption of textiles including increasing the longevity of textiles and the use of recycled fibers, curbing fast fashion, and making products easier to repair or recycle. One of the proposals under the strategy is the proposal for the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR), which will set new design requirements for textiles, and a Digital Product Passport (DPP). We will get into both in more detail in this issue.
What does it have to do with communication? The EU Strategy for Sustainable and Circular Textiles7 is an essential part of the Circular Economy Action Plan and EU Green Deal. With it also comes the EU Green Claims Directive which is directly affecting the environmental communication brands put out.
GCD – Green Claims Directive
The proposal for an EU Green Claims Directive was published in March 2023. It is still in its proposal state and has not been adopted yet – which is not expected before summer 2024. Once the Green Claims Directive is adopted, it will regulate how companies can put out environmental claims. We’ve written two issues about the proposal which you can read in more detail here.
To sum up its key aspects: Companies will have to substantiate any environmental claim and back it up with reliable, comparable, and verifiable data. And they will have to do that before the claim is published. A certificate granted by a third party is supposed to be used to put out green claims, changing the way environmental communication will work in the future. Its goal is to strengthen environmental claims so that the ones published in the future hold real meaning and create trust amongst consumers. So that consumers can make an informed purchasing decision without falling for greenwashing.
All companies making statements about the impact their product or service has on the environment will have to follow the rules of the GCD. With two exceptions:
→ Small companies with less than 10 employees and a maximum of 2 Mio. EUR annual revenue won’t have to follow the proposed regulations but are encouraged to do so. Keep in mind: Even if your company will not fall under the GCD, your communication is still covered by the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive.
→ Small and medium-sized companies are supposed to get an “ease of access to information and data for the assessment”. However, it is not yet clear how far they have to follow the GCD requirements and if a claim needs to be backed up by primary data.
In September 2023, a law was adopted banning “climate neutral” claims that are based on offsetting schemes. It is not part of the Green Claims Directive but an EU-wide law that is working towards the same goal as the GCD: To make the communication and marketing sphere easier to navigate for consumers and fight greenwashing.
What does it have to do with communication? Everything! At least if you want to put out environmental claims about your products or services in the future.
PEF – Product Environmental Footprint
The Product Environmental Footprint is a type of Life Cycle Assessment that uses a standardized set of indicators to assess the environmental impact of products within a specific product category. The product categories include carbon emissions but also environmental impact categories, such as water use, land use, and resource depletion.
The European Union has developed a voluntary environmental labeling scheme called the EU Ecolabel, which uses the PEF as one of its reference methods for assessing environmental impacts. Plus the PEF has so far been the focus method in the development of the EU Green Claims Directive proposal but is not defined to be mandatory.
The PEF has faced criticism for not covering all essential environmental aspects of a product’s life cycle–for example, the PEF currently doesn’t include microplastic release1. The current design of the PEF is also not entirely suitable as a basis for mapping a “just production and consumption system“ as it does not take circularity or sufficiency into account.
What does it have to do with communication? The European Commission proposed that “businesses substantiate their environmental claims using product and organization environmental footprint methods.” So PEF might be used to make environmental claims in the future–but we will keep you updated on this aspect as the Green Claims Directive is still in its proposal state and details are being discussed.
PS: We’ve covered the PEF in an entire issue already. You can read the issue here.
EPR – Extended Producer Responsibility
Extended Producer Responsibility schemes have been successful in improving the management of waste from several products, such as packaging, batteries, and electronic equipment. But until now there is only one EPR scheme active in the European Union that’s covering textiles. It’s implemented in France.
In July 2023 the European Commission proposed rules to “make producers responsible for the full lifecycle of textile products and to support the sustainable management of textile waste across the EU.” A mandatory and harmonized Extended Producer Responsibility scheme for textiles “will accelerate the development of the separate collection, sorting, reuse and recycling sector for textiles in the EU, in line with the EU Strategy for Sustainable and Circular Textiles.”8
According to the European Commission producers will “cover the costs of management of textile waste, which will also give them incentives to reduce waste and increase the circularity of textile products – designing better products from the start.”
What does it have to do with communication? The Extended Producer Responsibility will affect the way fashion and textile companies handle their business because their responsibility doesn’t stop at check-out. So implementing effective communication systems that teach consumers about what to do when they no longer use their textiles will be important.
DPP – Digital Product Passport
The new EU Digital Product Passport is a mandatory electronic record that provides information about the environmental sustainability, durability, reparability, recycled content, or the availability of spare parts of a product.9 It will be fully required by 2030.
The DPP is part of the EU Strategy for Sustainable Textiles and Ecodesign. It is supposed to help consumers and businesses make informed choices when purchasing products, facilitating repairs, and recycling. It will be mandatory for ALL textile and apparel products manufactured in or exported to the EU. Also, non-EU companies selling products on the EU market will have to follow the DPP regulations.
As the details of what the Digital Product Passport has to entail are not final yet, we will keep you updated on this topic as it develops.
Btw, the DPP is not only mandatory for textiles but also for industrial batteries, consumer electronics, and more.
What does it have to do with communication? The information provided by the Digital Product Passport is also supposed to help consumers know what’s in the product, and how and where it can be repaired and/or recycled. So effectively communicating the components and motivating consumers to treat their clothes accordingly will be essential to prolonging textile lifespans and keep them out of landfills.
That was a lot already–we know! But there are many more acronyms you should be familiar with. So we will do an additional issue on the following acronyms next week: ESPR, CSRD, UCPD, CS3D, and LCA.
And we’ve got a surprise: Knowing the political landscape is important, that’s why the next issue will be free as well!
Best,
Tanita & Lavinia
🔹 Learned something in this issue? Share The Crisps with your friends and colleagues.
🔹 Like our content? Support our work with a paid subscription.
🔹 Got feedback or topics we should cover? Send us an email to thecrisps@substack.com
Disclaimer: The content and opinions presented in The Crisps newsletter are for informational purposes only and do not constitute legal, ethical, or professional advice. The Crisps does not endorse any specific brands or products mentioned in its content.
European Commission. (2019). European Green Deal. Retrieved from https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/priorities-2019-2024/european-green-deal_en
European Commission. (2019). European Climate Law. Retrieved from https://climate.ec.europa.eu/eu-action/european-climate-law_en#:~:text=The%20European%20Climate%20Law%20writes,2030%2C%20compared%20to%201990%20levels
European Commission. (2023, April 27). Press release: Commission proposes to reinforce the European Solidarity Corps. Retrieved from https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_23_1692
European Commission. (2022, December 21). Press release: Commission proposes a European Democracy Action Plan. Retrieved from https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_22_2013
EUR-Lex. (2020). Proposal for a REGULATION OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL. Retrieved from https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?qid=1583933814386&uri=COM:2020:98:FIN
European Parliament. (2023, December 4). Deal on new EU rules to make sustainable products the norm. Retrieved from https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20231204IPR15634/deal-on-new-eu-rules-to-make-sustainable-products-the-norm
European Commission. (2023, July 18). Should we put fast fashion in the recycling bin? On the road to a green EU. Retrieved from https://environment.ec.europa.eu/news/should-we-put-fast-fashion-recycling-bin-road-green-3-2023-07-18_en
European Commission. (2023, December 21). Press release: Commission proposes a European Democracy Action Plan. Retrieved from https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_23_3635
GS1. (2023, March). [Document title not provided]. Retrieved from https://gs1.eu › wp-content › uploads › 2023/03