A claim you cannot evidence is a liability, not a feature.
Certifications, ESPR / CSRD compliance and circular models. The work is the paper trail behind the sentence on the label - which is also the only part a regulator is interested in.
Where the exceptions live
Three jobs, and what each one is usually missing.
Compliance work fails on scope rather than on effort. The margin here is the part that is discovered late, when the evidence is harder to get.
What ESPR, CSRD and the Green Claims rules require of you and by when, which supplier claims survive an audit, and where your real impact sits.
A rule that applies at the product level and a rule that applies at the company level need different evidence, and a team that has one often assumes it has the other.
The imagery and the page that present a position honestly - no claim on a picture the documents cannot support.
A comparative claim carries a higher bar than an absolute one. 'Lower impact' invites the question 'than what', and that comparison has to exist somewhere in writing.
The digital product passport, the code of conduct, the supplier agreement and the ESG report your buyers ask for.
Evidence has to survive a supplier change. A substantiation that names one mill stops being true the season you dual-source, and nothing in the document says so.
What this sector is a watch on
Regulation - ESPR, CSRD, digital passports - arriving on legislative timelines with dates fixed years ahead.
How fast the answer goes stale
A deadline does not decay, it arrives; and it arrives with the range already in production.
The vocabulary
Six words that decide what you may claim.
Compliance turns on terms with legal weight. Each one sets what has to be evidenced, by whom, and what happens when it is not.
- Scope 3
- Which emissions you are answerable for. For apparel it is nearly all of them, and it sits in the supply chain rather than in your own operations.
- Chain of custody
- Whether a certified input can be claimed on the finished product. Certificates cover a transaction, not a company, so an unbroken document trail is the claim.
- Digital product passport
- What has to be attached to the item itself, and when. It converts sustainability from a report you publish into data you carry per SKU.
- Substantiation
- Whether a green claim survives challenge. Under the Green Claims regime the burden is on the claimant, and an unevidenced claim is treated as a false one.
- LCA boundary
- What a footprint number actually covers. Two cradle-to-gate figures are not comparable if the boundaries differ, which is where most published comparisons fall over.
- Due diligence
- Whether identifying a risk is enough. It is not - the obligation is to act on what you find and to record that you acted.
What each term decides, not what it means. No thresholds printed - an accept level and a duty rate move by contract and market, so the live value is read against your own spec.
Evidence, by strength
Not every proof is the same proof.
What separates a defensible claim from an assertion is which of these it rests on. The register runs from the weakest at the left to the strongest at the right, and most disputed claims sit in the first two.
- Supplier says
- An assertion in an email. A starting point, never an evidence base.
- Self-declared
- Your own statement, unaudited. Fine internally, thin under challenge.
- Certified input
- A scheme certificate on a material, valid for what it actually covers.
- Tested result
- A lab result against a named method, with the method on the document.
- Traced chain
- Transaction certificates linking the finished item back to the input.
No leaf, no recycling symbol. The claim is about these - a fibre, a finish, a trim - and the register above is what decides whether anything you say about them will hold.
Sustainability output
The documents the claim rests on.
Real deliverables, produced end to end.
Sustainability & ESG
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What actually runs
Reading a regulation, substantiating a claim and tracing a supply chain are three trades, and they are split three ways here. One system, 110 tools and 235 playbooks behind it.
Handed to
- Sustainability Analyst
- Circularity & Resale Analyst
- Sourcing Analyst
- Fashion Counsel
Get started
Start with a sustainability question.
Ask it in plain language and get the document, the creative or the spec back - sourced, and yours to edit.