Mariliis Haljasorg

The fashion and textile industry is undergoing profound transformation driven by regulatory, environmental and societal pressures to reduce its significant contributions to global waste, emissions and resource depletion. In the European Union (EU), this transition is being formalised through the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR), which introduces mandatory sustainability and circularity requirements for textile products, including the Digital Product Passport (DPP). The emerging DPP framework is expected to include product-specific, life-cycle-based environmental information requirements, creating new compliance obligations for garment manufacturers supplying the EU market, particularly those based outside the EU. This study examines the readiness of global garment manufacturers to meet these requirements, with a focus on data availability, supply chain traceability, and alignment with the methodological expectations of the Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) framework. A mixed-methods approach is employed, combining a survey of garment manufacturers in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Turkey with a case study of upcycled garments produced for the Estonian national team for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. The findings identify key barriers to generating DPP-compliant environmental data, including limited life cycle assessment (LCA) expertise, fragmented and inconsistent upstream datasets, insufficient digital data systems and the practical complexity of applying PEF Category Rules across diverse production contexts. The case study further demonstrates how data gaps constrain the assessment of innovative circular materials, revealing a mismatch between regulatory expectations and current industry capabilities. Overall, this study highlights the need for phased DPP implementation, simplified cradle-to-gate assessment approaches and clearer, more harmonised methodological guidance to support an achievable and equitable transition towards sustainable textile supply chains.