Blue Cast: Bluesign’s Mark Edridge on Friction and First Steps as Fashion Readies for Regulation
Blue Cast is a podcast series from the TENCEL™ Denim team. Each episode features a conversation with a special guest from within the industry or the fringes of the denim community. The following is a recap of Episode 601.
Sustainability is quickly turning from a voluntary action to a regulated requirement for fashion brands.
On the latest episode of our Blue Cast podcast, Mark Edridge, product manager at certification system Bluesign, joined Lenzing’s Tuncay Kilickan to give an overview of the legislation coming down the pipeline in the EU. As multiple regulations are due to be enforced by 2029 or earlier, brands must prepare to meet new guidelines for everything from product design to communication.
“We’re going from an almost entirely unregulated market to a very heavily regulated one, and that would be a challenge for any industry, and for one that’s as diverse and disparate as the textile business, the challenges will be enormous, without a doubt,” said Mark.
Before joining Bluesign roughly three years ago, Mark worked in product management for companies like Nintendo and Coca-Cola. “My background being broadly commercial, I think, gives me a little bit of empathy for the challenges that producers of textiles and apparel and footwear are going to be facing in the EU with all of this legislative change,” he said.
The EU Green Deal, which Mark described as the bloc’s “mission to the moon” for carbon neutrality, has come with a series of laws, including Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR). With ESPR, the EU Parliament has been given the power to dictate how products should be made, including stipulating lower energy use, durability, design for disassembly, recycled content, a lower carbon footprint and more. Along with batteries and consumer electronics, the apparel, textiles and footwear industry is one of the categories included in the initial rollout of ESPR, having been identified as a high polluting field.
Seeking to reduce fashion’s impact at end of life, the Delegated Act for Textiles will ban the disposal and destruction of unsold goods by large companies. A draft of the act is expected this year, with a subsequent published version in 2027. It is anticipated this will be enforced starting in 2029. Similarly, the Textile Waste Framework makes producers responsible for dealing with their products at end of life through recycling, reusing, repairing or disposing.
The Delegated Act for Textiles also encompasses the rollout of digital product passports (DPP) that share information on the life of a product with consumers. This includes details on how the garment can be recycled or disposed of at end of life.
Fashion’s supply chains tend to be opaque, particularly past tier 1 and 2 suppliers that brands engage with more directly. Although the specifics of this legislation are up in the air until the draft is published, one step companies can take is breaking down some of this opacity.
“Our first recommendation to anybody feeling a little bit overwhelmed by this sort of legislation is focus your effort on understanding your supply chain, because until you do… there’s no way you can report and, most importantly, improve the scoring that you get,” said Mark. This scoring might have direct financial implications, as he anticipates it being used at ports by customs officials to determine duty rates. Additionally, where extended producer responsibility (EPR) legislation exists—such as in France—companies that rely on the government’s take-back scheme pay a tax on each item they bring to market. If an article of clothing is deemed low impact, the tax is waived and companies receive additional funds.
Financially, this could also have implications on consumer choice. Other industries have already had eco labeling regulations put into place, with success. For instance, back in the 1990s, the EU began centrally testing and labeling appliances with energy efficiency ratings. Because there was a standard scale for the energy grades and rules about how the stickers needed to appear, it made it easy for consumers to make an apples-to-apples comparison. As a result, shoppers ended up choosing machines that consumed less energy than those bought the previous year.
Information gathering will also help companies as they seek to comply with Green Claims directives, which regulate how they can talk about sustainability.
“There is green claims legislation coming forward, which will help to remove some of the misleading, vague claims, to put it politely, around products, so that the consumer receiving information about products can therefore trust it,” Mark said. “At the moment, unfortunately, that’s not the case. You can’t trust the information you receive about the environmental performance, because that landscape has ironically been polluted by misclaims or vague or misleading claims.”
Listen to the full conversation here.