Fashion's compliance crisis: epr and dpps expose a broken system

The European Union’s push for digital product passports (DPPs) and extended producer responsibility (EPR) is forcing the Fashion industry to confront a stark reality: its existing infrastructure simply can’t handle the coming deluge of data and responsibility.

A race against time: compliance moves from strategy to survival

Brands, regardless of location, face mounting requirements to track product composition, supply chains, and environmental impact. A simplified DPP is slated for late 2027, with full implementation following, yet the deadlines arrive in swift succession – April 2028 for EPR at scale – leaving a critical gap between ambition and execution.

The immediate challenge isn’t just gathering information; it’s the lack of machine-readable supplier data, domestic sorting facilities, and the overall capacity to process the volume of waste EPR will generate. As Liz Alessi, founder of the Crisis of Stuff, succinctly puts it, ‘DPPs are being developed as a data layer, but the systems they’re meant to support – sorting, resale, recycling – are not yet equipped to fully use that data.’

The data deluge: a scattered and inconsistent landscape

The scope of the data requirements – encompassing material composition, recycled content, and complex supply chains – is staggering. Currently, this information is fragmented, inconsistently formatted, and largely inaccessible across PLM, ERP, and traceability platforms. Philipp Mayer, co-founder of Retraced, highlights the fundamental issue: ‘Not all of this data exists today.’

Adding to the complexity, Amlani of Retail Strategy Group points out that siloed operations – merchandising and sourcing isolated from one another – exacerbate the problem.