Model
Fixed by design: fibre composition, recyclability, footprint class, care. What shoppers compare at the point of sale.
ESPR 2024/1781 · Textile apparel · Delegated act ~2027
The textile passport: what an operator must publish.
What it's made of, what's hidden in it, where it was cut, how to care for it, how to bring it back: one passport for every garment placed on the EU market, with the delegated act expected in 2027.
Textile passport data
The data comes from the supply chain, but the operator answers for it.
One garment passes through fifteen hands before it reaches a shelf. Each one knows only the supplier beside it. Fibre, chemistry, origin, footprint: the proof a passport needs is scattered up a chain that guards every link as a trade secret. The law hands the whole bill to the last name in the chain: the economic operator, whoever places the garment on the EU market, brand or importer.
- CottonOrigin
- YarnTier 3
- FabricTier 2
- GarmentTier 1
- ImporterOwes the DPP
Brands see only tier-1. Tier-2, tier-3 and origin stay dark. No APIs. Just PDF certificates, re-typed into every buyer's portal.
15+economic operators behind one garment
80%of EU garments are imported
99%of the supply chain are SMEs
0APIs. It travels by email and PDF
The challenge is not the availability of data. It is the absence of standardised formats, interoperable systems, and scalable digital workflows.
JRC · Study on DPP content for textile apparelTextile passport process
The seven steps to a textile passport.
The law asks one company for a record it doesn't hold. This is how Bindu is building it, in seven moves. Supplier collection, evidence and the audit trail run today on the EUDR filing engine. The textile passport engine is still being built, so every step below is marked planned.
01 / 07 · AskPlanned
Ask each tier for the one field it holds.
Bindu runs supplier collection this way for EUDR today. One request per supplier, tier-1 down to the raw material, each asked for a single field in the language they answer in.
fibre %dye lotfacility GLNtest reportrecycled cert
Passport access rights
One QR code shows each reader a different view.
A shopper, a recycler, a customs officer. Same record, a different page for each. Pick a door. Watch the fields change.
PublicUnique product identifier
PublicProduct category
PublicProducer identity
PublicFibre composition
PublicRobustness score
PublicRecyclability score
PublicRecycled / organic %
PublicSubstances of concern + concentration
PublicCarbon footprint class
PublicCare & repair info
PublicWarranty
Legit. interestLocation of substances of concern
Legit. interestDisassembly / end-of-life info
Legit. interestAbsolute footprint value
Legit. interestFootprint calculation parameters
Legit. interestRecycled & organic weights
AuthorityEconomic-operator contacts
AuthorityConformity certificates & declarations
AuthorityAppended inspection reports
Each door inherits the ones above it. Verifiable credentials hold the tiers. No login leaks the recycler's view to a shopper.
Granularity
Model, batch, or item?
How fine you go is the whole cost question. The JRC settles it: batch is the floor, model the default, item a voluntary head start.
Batch
The floor the law asks for. Producer, dye chemistry, self-declared tests. The things that change from run to run.
Item
A serial ID, assigned early and cheap. Then fed events as they happen: repair, resale, recycling. The inheritance model.
What people actually buy on.
YouGov 2021 · 11,483 people82% still find the environmental labels useless, lost among 297 ecolabels. The real hunger is downstream. At the recycler.
Textile passport deadlines
The textile passport clock is already running.
The passport lands around 2028. The scaffolding is going up now. One of these dates is fixed in law. The rest move with the delegated act.
The deadline for the EU's central DPP Registry to be operational (ESPR Article 13), 24 months after entry into force. It went live on 20 July 2026 under Implementing Regulation (EU) 2026/1778: the authoritative directory that resolves a product's identifier to where its passport data is held. The same date starts the first concrete textile obligation, the ban on large companies destroying unsold clothing.
Recycling and resale
The passport stays with the garment after the sale.
End-of-life is where the passport earns its keep. It is also where today's tools go blind.
Recycling's infrared scanners can't read blends, layered garments, materials under 5%, or dark colours. Printed labels fade or get cut out. One thing survives the wash and still names every fibre. The passport.
- NIR fails on blends
- multi-layer
- minerals < 5%
- dark colours
- faded labels
Digital product passport standards
The open standards underneath.
Bindu is being built onto the EU's own open standards rather than a private format. They come from Eclipse Tractus-X, the open dataspace stack the German car industry already ships its supply chains on, and its building blocks are KITs, “Keep It Together”. One of them is wired today: the connector. Bindu drives a stock Eclipse Dataspace Connector, and the other blocks below are the standards the passport is being built onto, not features you can use yet. Pick one to see the job it does.
Cross-industry
Eco Pass
The Digital Product Passport blueprint: the data model a garment's passport is built from, the carrier it binds to, and the public page it resolves to when someone scans it.
- DPP aspect models
- Data-carrier binding
- Public + restricted views
From the blog
Read more from the blog.
Fundamentals · 7 min readWhat Is a Digital Product Passport for Textiles?A digital product passport for textiles is a scannable record of a garment's fibres, origin, care and compliance, required under the EU's ESPR. What it holds and who owes it.Reference · 4 min readDigital Product Passport for Textiles: Timeline & DatesWhen does the textile digital product passport apply? The ESPR timeline, from the 19 July 2026 unsold-stock ban to the textile delegated act expected around 2027.Guide · 6 min readDigital Product Passport for Textiles: Data RequirementsWhat data a textile digital product passport must hold: product identity, fibre composition, care and repair, durability, recycled content and compliance, and who assembles it.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions.
Textiles and apparel sit in the first wave of the ESPR working plan, with an indicative 2027 timeframe. The exact date the textile DPP becomes mandatory is set once the ESPR delegated act for textiles is adopted.
Source: European Commission: Ecodesign working plan 2025 to 2030
From 19 July 2026, large companies may no longer destroy unsold clothing, clothing accessories, and footwear, under the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation. It is the first concrete, dated textile obligation under the ESPR.
Source: EUR-Lex: EU Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation
Large companies from 19 July 2026. Medium-sized companies receive an extended transition period, and micro and small enterprises are exempt from the destruction ban.
Source: EUR-Lex: EU Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation
Likely product identity, fibre composition and materials, care and repair information, durability and recyclability, and compliance data. The exact data set is defined by the forthcoming ESPR delegated act for textiles.
Source: EUR-Lex: EU Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation
The Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR), which establishes the Digital Product Passport framework across product categories, with textiles among the first.
Source: EUR-Lex: EU Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation
Each garment gets a unique identifier, carried on the product in a QR code, NFC or RFID tag. Scanning the data carrier links directly to the passport data: fibre composition, care and repair, durability, recycled content and compliance. The EU's central DPP Registry is a directory that records each product's unique identifier; it is not what a consumer scan routes through. The content stays with the brand or its passport service provider, not on an EU server.
Source: EUR-Lex: EU Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation
Through a data carrier fixed to the garment, usually a QR code but also NFC or RFID, made to survive washing and still resolve years after the sale. One scan opens the passport. What it shows depends on who is asking: a public view for shoppers, and wider views for recyclers and authorities through separate access tiers.
Source: EUR-Lex: EU Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation
The economic operator that places the product on the EU market, usually the manufacturer or the importer, owes the passport. ESPR lets that operator appoint an independent passport service provider to create and maintain it on their behalf, but the legal responsibility stays with the operator.
Source: EUR-Lex: EU Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation
No. Only a product's unique identifier goes to the EU's central DPP Registry, which is a directory, not a blockchain. The passport content itself stays with the operator or its service provider. The system is built on open EU standards, the EN 18216 to 18223 family, not on any single ledger technology.
Source: EUR-Lex: EU Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation
Yes. The Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation repealed and replaced the 2009 Ecodesign Directive. It keeps the energy-efficiency rules but extends ecodesign and the Digital Product Passport to almost every physical product, with textiles among the first groups.
Source: EUR-Lex: EU Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation
The exact scope will be set by the ESPR delegated act for textiles, but the Ecodesign working plan lists apparel and clothing accessories as a priority group, with footwear expected alongside them. Scope is set by product category, not company size, so a small brand placing a finished garment on the EU market is as much in scope as a large one. Until the delegated act is adopted, treat any finished textile, apparel, or footwear item sold in the EU as a likely candidate.
Source: European Commission: Ecodesign working plan 2025 to 2030
No, they are two separate obligations. The Digital Product Passport comes from the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation and governs the product-level data a garment must carry. Extended Producer Responsibility for textiles comes from the revised EU Waste Framework Directive and makes producers fund the collection and treatment of textile waste. A brand can owe both, but they are different laws with different triggers.
Pricing
Book a 30-minute demoWhat a textile passport costs.
Digital Product Passport · two payers, one record
€999a quarter for the brand. The label printer pays the rest.
Two payersthe brand pays quarterly, the printer per unit
- Brand: €999 a quarter for the product record and supply-chain collection.
- Label printer: €0.59 a unit at print, once passport minting ships. A 100,000 run is €59,000.
- Battery passport 18 Feb 2027, textiles follow.
Industry: DPP platform and QR pricing is quoted per project. Bindu publishes its price instead.
Keeping your workspace live is €20 a month. EU-hosted, GDPR compliant. Prices exclude VAT.
Operator responsibility
Start with one garment.
ESPR names an independent passport service provider to run the DPP for the operator. That is the role Bindu is building for. The unglamorous commitments below are what make a passport provider trustworthy.
5 yearsthe standard retention term, ten years on request
4 languagesEnglish, German, Spanish and Dutch today
Full auditversioned, append-only history
Shared liabilitywhat the rules assign importer and maker
No greenwashingwhat Article 7 demands of voluntary claims