As promising as circularity is as a whole, the fashion industry has yet to develop at-scale solutions to managing garments across their lifecycle. Despite good intentions and some initial circular transformation, less than 1% of clothing is recycled back into garments today. One of the main barriers for sorting facilities is the ability to identify products and their materials for resale or recycling.
The Circular Product Data Protocol is the common language for Digital Identification of apparel products. It standardizes product and material-level data so products can speak a shared language that all stakeholders can understand. This enables resellers and recyclers to efficiently scale their services to brands.
EON has taken steps to launch an Advisory Council to oversee governance and development of the Protocol overtime to ensure it continues to accurately reflect a rapidly changing industry. The Council will shape the future direction of the initiative and ensure it is scalable and openly accessible to all, along with ensuring it reflects industry stakeholder needs. You can read more about this here.
Leading global brands and retailers such as Target and YOOX-NET-A-PORTER first piloted the Protocol, providing usability insights that improved the significance, clarity and adoption of each data field. Now the Protocol is being implemented by many more brands through EON.
Global policy has also welcomed the protocol, with The EU Strategy for Sustainable and Circular Textiles aiming to transform the fashion retail industry by 2030 by requiring that products across the textile industry be associated with a Digital Product Passport, or Digital ID, to be sold in Europe. Companies leveraging the protocol will have a head start with the collection and communication of critical data needed for product resale, recycling and consumer transparency.
