An industry-led initiative to tackle fashion’s biggest barrier to circularity

The Circular Product Data Protocol was developed by EON with leaders from across fashion retail, united by a vision to solve fashion’s biggest barriers to circularity.

THE LANGUAGE OF CIRCULAR FASHION

THE PROBLEM

Fashion needs at-scale solutions to accelerate circularity

As promising as circularity is as a whole, the fashion industry has yet to develop at-scale solutions to managing garments across their lifecycle. Despite good intentions and some initial circular transformation, less than 1% of clothing is recycled back into garments today. One of the main barriers for sorting facilities is the ability to identify products and their materials for resale or recycling.

THE OBJECTIVE

Remove communication and access barriers to product and material data

While there is no silver bullet for getting from here to there, technology enablers such as Digital ID can accelerate circular progress. But for this system to work at scale across the industry, product and material data needs to be relevant, accessible and shareable across the industry. Products should “speak” a shared language that all stakeholders can understand.

THE SOLUTION

A shared language for products in the circular economy

The Circular Product Data Protocol is the common language for Digital Identification of apparel products. It sets forth a consistent format of product and material-level data for brands to create item-level Digital IDs of their products, and exchange essential data with resale and recycling partners.