The European Green Deal for a sustainable, climate-neutral continent has far-reaching implications for the textile industry. Among other things, every textile placed on the market in the EU is to be labelled with a digital product passport in the future in order to facilitate reuse and recycling and at the same time make supply chains more transparent. At Dibella, this disclosure has long been part of everyday practice: items labelled with the respect-code document their entire life cycle.
The complete supply chain with one click
Transparency in the supply chain is a matter of course at Dibella. We know the stages that a fibre goes through, from the field to the finished hotel textile. That's why we decided years ago to disclose this to our customers. At the time, we decided to use the respect-code to document the stages in the value chain. This is a digital solution for the traceability of products. It is based on the structured recording, verification and analysis of the relevant data for each item and generates a QR code or a numeric/letter code for the respective product. When scanned, this leads directly to the product passport created individually for each product on the website www.respect-code.org. In addition to a photo and/or video of the article, important basic information such as material composition, weight, size, colour and the respective certification is stored there.
Information from the field to the recycler
The "traceability" tab lists the categories of raw material, production, manufacture, transport and brand. We have stored detailed data for each stage, which - depending on the item - can range from the cotton field to the end consumer (e.g. a hotel) and even to the recycling company. We share all this information with our customers on request. We generate the respect-code for the goods, create the labels (printed or woven) and sew them in. In this way, textile service companies can prove the transparency of their value chain. In Germany, it is already regulated by the German Supply Chain Act. It is still pending at European level, but the legal basis has already been laid there too.
Conserving resources through circularity
The basis is the European Green Deal: The European Parliament has set itself the goal of making the international community the first climate-neutral continent by 2050. This goal is to be achieved by transforming the economy from a linear to a circular economy and is defined in the Circular Economy Action Plan. Instead of constantly consuming new raw materials for consumer goods, resources are to be saved by sharing, renting/leasing, reusing, repairing or refurbishing and recycling. The idea behind the concept is clear: the more products circulate, the fewer raw materials are required for the production of goods and the less carbon dioxide (CO₂) is released.
A plan with many actions for a circular textile economy
The textile industry is one of the sectors responsible for an enormous consumption of resources and the release of massive amounts of greenhouse gases. The European Parliament estimates that the fashion industry is responsible for ten per cent of global CO₂ emissions and that around 270 kilograms of greenhouse gases were released per person in the member states through the purchase of fashion in 2020. With its strategy for sustainable and recyclable textiles published on 30th March 2022, the European Commission is addressing the environmental impact of the industry. It lists numerous measures aimed at reducing waste and increasing the recyclability of textiles. Key points include the (not yet legally binding) EU Ecodesign Regulation (1), Extended Producer Responsibility and the EU Waste Shipment Regulation.
Screenshot: "Villach" supply chain on the respect-code website
Wide range of information in the DPP
These and other European Commission initiatives have an enormous impact on the textile value chain: in order to implement the defined circularity principles, comprehensive information is required on every product returned to the cycle. This is where the Digital Product Passport (DPP) comes in. Depending on the legal requirements, it is expected to provide information on the ingredients, materials and components of a textile product as well as information on its reusability, repair and maintenance from 2027. This means that in the future, not only all components of a product, but also its composition and origin will have to be documented by a manufacturer. This information will therefore significantly increase the transparency of a textile product and make it easier to recycle or reuse.
The digital product passport makes a textile uniquely identifiable with the help of a structured data set organised in a standardised format. The information is stored in databases and can be easily retrieved. A smartphone should be sufficient for this. It can be used to read the data carrier attached to the product, the packaging or the accompanying documents. Incidentally, the type of production determines whether each individual product needs its own DPP. If one and the same product follows an identical supply chain, one product passport is sufficient for all individual items.
(1) The Ecodesign Regulation aims to improve the environmental and social sustainability of products placed on the EU market. It builds on the existing Ecodesign Directive, which currently only covers energy-related products and is known, for example, from refrigerators, washing machines and televisions. The new regulation creates the framework for defining environmentally relevant requirements in significantly more product groups, including textiles.