In fashion, “sustainability” used to mean a handful of capsule collections and a nice page on the website. Today, it means something much more concrete: understanding the environmental impact of every product you put on the market and being able to prove it. That was the focus of our recent webinar, where Delogue’s Head of ESG & Communication, Anja Padget, sat down with Namrata Sandhu, Founder & CEO of Vaayu, to talk about how brands can navigate product environmental impact, regulations, and data, without needing a 20-person sustainability team.
As Namrata put it, “At Vaayu, we came in to really help brands and retailers understand the data and their environmental impact and really think about where they can optimize, how they can lower their impact, and of course meet regulatory and compliance requirements.”
Below is a recap of the key themes from the conversation and what they mean for fashion brands that want to stay ahead of the curve instead of constantly chasing new rules.
The starting point for many brands is a sense of overwhelm. As Anja described at the beginning of the webinar, many companies have been “hit by all of the legislation coming our way,” much of it defined in rooms far away from daily design and sourcing work. The EU Strategy for Sustainable and Circular Textiles 2030 laid out an agenda that has since turned into concrete rules and upcoming obligations. Even though there has been noise about rollbacks and delays, Namrata stressed that the core expectations, especially at product level, haven’t gone away.
In France, an environmental “eco-score” already requires certain brands trading in the French market to display a product-level score based on a state-defined methodology. The Eco-design for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR) and the Digital Product Passport (DPP) will demand much deeper traceability and disclosure, forcing brands to understand where products and materials come from and how they are made. Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) for apparel and footwear under the EU Waste Framework Directive will push brands to disclose material composition, recycled content and durability, and may even introduce penalties for fast fashion models.
Across all of this, Namrata sees one common denominator: “If you think about it holistically, there’s quite a bit of regulation, but they really touch product and really understanding your supply chain.” Even if the exact timelines shift (for example, the DPP currently discussed around 2027) the direction of travel is clear. Brands will need richer, more reliable product and supply chain data.
A recurring fear is that brands need fully mapped supply chains and perfect datasets before they can start calculating product impact. Namrata was very clear that this is not the case. “This is very much an iterative process,” she emphasized. “The starting point is material composition, country of origin, sort of the basic product-level data. And it’s important to say that’s enough to get started.”
The first step is to take stock of what already exists. That means mapping current data sources across PLM, ERP, Excel files and supplier questionnaires, and understanding which product fields are already reliable. From there, brands can run a simple data-gap exercise: What do we know today? Which regulations could we comply with now? What extra data would we need to comply with more in future?
The outcome should be a realistic roadmap rather than a wish list. Some gaps can be addressed this year, for instance by improving material breakdowns or country-of-origin fields. Others, such as process-level data from deeper tiers, will require a longer-term plan. Without that basic clarity, sustainability teams risk being stuck in “firefighting mode” every time a new requirement appears.
There is no single, universal data checklist that fits every brand or category, but some foundations are more or less universal. Namrata highlighted that the most important thing is to focus on the largest levers, the places where the footprint really comes from.
That typically begins with materials and composition: which fibres and trims are used, in what quantities and percentages. Country of origin is another key field, even if it is more difficult to extract from existing systems than it first appears.
From there, the next level of detail depends heavily on the product category. For denim, washing and finishing processes and where they take place become particularly important. For other categories, different steps in the production process will dominate the footprint.
That is why she recommends defining the key data points per main product category and then going deeper by tier over time – from Tier 1 manufacturing to material production and beyond. The same data serves both impact calculations and traceability requirements such as DPPs and EPR.
Another frequent question from Delogue customers is when to collect all this information: during design, at order placement, or after production. Here, Namrata encouraged brands to distinguish between two primary goals. If the goal is to design better products and reduce impact, then the data needs to be available before orders are placed. In that case, impact and material information must be integrated into design and buying workflows so that decisions can be made with visibility on environmental consequences. If the main goal is regulatory compliance and reporting, data can also be collected once products have already been produced and placed on the market. This allows brands to meet disclosure requirements, but gives less room to influence the design itself.
“As a brand, you need to make a decision in terms of what are we trying to do and what are we trying to achieve,” Namrata said. “If it’s about designing better products, it needs to be before you place an order. If it’s about reporting, you can work with products already on the market.” Most brands will find themselves working on both tracks, but being clear about the primary purpose helps decide where in the product development process data collection belongs.
For most teams, the barrier isn’t a lack of intention; it’s the scale of the task. Few brands have the resources to manually process data for thousands of SKUs, especially when regulations increasingly demand product-level disclosures. That is where technology and partnerships between PLM and impact platforms become critical.
“Once you’ve collected all of this data and you’ve got all of this large volume of data, what do you do next with it?” Namrata asked. “That’s where you can lean into software… Sustainability teams should be focused on working with their stakeholders to improve data and optimize products – not figuring out how to calculate everything manually.”
Platforms like Vaayu connect to systems such as Delogue, pulling relevant product and material data directly from PLM, running standardized impact calculations at scale, and sending back usable, consistent results that teams can act on. For sustainability teams, this means less time spent creating methodologies and more time working with designers, buyers and suppliers to reduce impact and meet regulatory requirements.
Suppliers play a central role in product impact data and that role will only grow. Anja noted that many brands are already moving away from the old idea that a “locally sourced” label from a supplier is enough.
“We’re sort of done with this idea of just 'supplied by a supplier, locally sourced’,” she recalled from an earlier conversation with a sustainability manager. “We’re going to have to know where things are coming from – and that probably means we’ll begin to nominate more, rather than being reliant on suppliers to find it for us.”
Namrata expects several shifts in supplier relationships as regulations mature. First, the expectation for data from suppliers will increase, not only on materials but on processes, locations and certifications. Second, material choice will increasingly be driven by nominated options from brands, particularly if there are financial penalties linked to certain fibres or waste profiles. Third, because collecting and exchanging good-quality data takes time, brands may move towards longer, more stable supplier relationships, where trust and data quality can be built over multiple seasons.
Technology again plays a role here. Anja shared that Delogue is “very much aware” of the need to give suppliers a stronger role inside the platform, especially when it comes to enriching data needed for impact calculations and supply chain mapping. The goal is to enable suppliers to contribute structured data without shifting ownership of the Bill of Materials away from the brand and without burying everyone in email attachments and scattered files.
A crucial mindset shift is seeing sustainability and impact data not as “extra work” but as core business infrastructure, much like financial reporting.
She expects a few clear trends to accelerate. Product footprints are likely to be integrated into Digital Product Passports and become visible on consumer-facing product pages. Customers may start to compare impact scores much as they compare ratings on beauty or food products today. “If I’m buying a T-shirt from two different brands and the footprints look really different, and I see it on both sides, maybe I pick the one that’s lower,” she said.
On top of that, a continuous wave of regulation is expected through 2030. The period from 2020 to 2025 has already seen a dramatic increase in rules affecting fashion; Namrata anticipates a similar scale of new legislation between 2025 and 2030. In that context, brands that treat sustainability data as a strategic capability, rather than a late-stage reporting exercise, will be in a much better position.
So how can brands avoid constantly “putting out fires” every time a new rule appears? Namrata’s final advice was to zoom out and be strategic.
Most regulations ask for very similar things: better product data, better supply chain visibility, and more transparency on materials and processes. The first step is to map the regulatory landscape and identify those overlapping requirements. From there, brands can build a data roadmap that serves multiple regulations at once, rather than creating separate, reactive workstreams for each new law.
“We’ve talked a lot about the amount and quantity of regulations coming in,” she said, “but they all have very similar threads and they all have very similar requirements that kind of overlap. So really focus on those key pieces rather than getting lost and trying to focus on 20 different regulations at once.”
To support that, Vaayu offers a free regulation tracker to help brands understand which rules apply to them and what they need to prepare. Combined with the right infrastructure inside PLM and strong supplier collaboration, tools like this can help brands move from chasing individual deadlines to building long-term resilience.
As Anja wrapped up the session, she underlined that product impact, traceability and supplier collaboration will continue to be core themes in Delogue’s work, from platform development to upcoming webinars and events.
If you want to understand which product data you already have in Delogue, plan how to enrich it for impact calculations, or explore how integration with solutions like Vaayu could work for your setup, you are always welcome to reach out.
Sustainability is no longer a side project. It is part of how you design, source and stay in business. The brands that start building that infrastructure now will be the ones that are ready, not just when the next regulation hits, but when customers start voting with their baskets.
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