The destruction ban is the near date. Under the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation, Regulation (EU) 2024/1781, which entered into force on 18 July 2024, large companies are barred from destroying unsold textiles and footwear from 19 July 2026. Medium-sized companies have until 19 July 2030. Micro and small companies are exempt, though they still carry transparency reporting on what they discard. The European Commission named textiles, with a focus on apparel, as a top priority when it adopted the 2025 to 2030 ESPR working plan on 15 April 2025.
For an importer, the near-term effect is narrow but real. Pulping a container of unsold jackets or shredding returned stock to clear a warehouse stops being a legal option for a large EU seller from next month. That changes how overstock, returns and quality rejects get handled at the EU end of the chain, and it pushes the cost of getting the order wrong back toward better forecasting and better quality up front.
The product passport is the part that reaches your factory
The larger change is the Digital Product Passport. The Commission's research arm, the Joint Research Centre, published its study on passport content for textile apparel products under the ESPR on 13 May 2026, setting out what the passport will have to carry. The textile delegated act that makes it binding is expected in early 2027, with obligations phasing in around mid-2028 after the usual 18-month transition. The passport applies to final apparel placed on the EU market, defined as goods that are at least 80 percent textile fibre by weight. Fibres, yarns and fabrics sold on their own sit outside it, as do electronic textiles, personal protective equipment, medical devices and items classed as toys.
Each garment carries a passport reached through a QR code on the product or its packaging. The study lists the data it must hold: a unique product identifier, the manufacturer, the country of assembly and the country of origin of the main materials, fibre composition including recycled content, any substances of concern, a durability and repairability score, care instructions, and end-of-life guidance. Products are identified by a GTIN and facilities by a GLN, alongside the standard HS or TARIC customs code. Most of that is supplier-level data, and most importers do not hold it yet.
Why the bill lands on the importer, not the factory
The legal duty to register the passport and keep it accurate sits with the operator that places the product on the EU market. Where the manufacturer is outside the EU, that operator is the importer. A brand in Berlin or Dublin buying jackets from Guangdong is the party a market-surveillance officer will ask for the passport, not the plant in China. This is an EU rule. It binds goods sold into the EU regardless of where they were made, and it does not reach an importer who only sells into the United States, the Gulf or Australia. Apparel groups spent this past week pressing Brussels for a lighter touch on how the data is presented, which tells you the data itself is the hard part.
And the data is the catch. Country of origin of the main materials and the identity of the assembling factory are not things a desk-bound buyer can confirm from a price quote. They sit two or three tiers down, with the mill and the yarn supplier standing behind the cutting-and-sewing plant. A trader reselling someone else's stock cannot hand you an auditable chain back to them, which is the same blind spot that already lets a switched supplier or a relabelled origin slip through today.
Start capturing the factory data now, while you can still see the factory
The passport rewards importers who already know their supply chain and exposes the ones buying blind. If you cannot name the factory that assembled your garment or the country its fabric came from, you have until roughly mid-2028 to find out, and you will need the factory's cooperation to get there. That is what Mila sets up. A verified, English and Mandarin-speaking agent on the ground confirms the real factory with a GPS-stamped video audit, records its identity and the origin of the materials, and holds it to a bilingual NNN before any money moves, all inside one WhatsApp thread you watch and run. The same record that protects you from a supplier that turns out to be a trader is the record the EU will ask you to publish in two years. Map it now, while the factory is still taking your order, not in 2028 when the passport is overdue.
Sources: European Commission, Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2024/1781) (entered into force 18 July 2024; introduces the Digital Product Passport and a ban on the destruction of unsold consumer products, with the prohibition for textiles and footwear applying to large companies from 19 July 2026 and to medium-sized companies from 19 July 2030, micro and small companies exempt subject to reporting). 2025 to 2030 ESPR working plan adopted 15 April 2025 naming textiles, with a focus on apparel, as a priority product group. Passport content and scope: Intertek, "Preparing for the EU Digital Product Passport (DPP) in Textile Apparel," 26 May 2026 (drawing on the Joint Research Centre study on DPP content for textile apparel products under the ESPR, dated 13 May 2026: the mandate applies to final textile apparel of at least 80 percent textile fibre by weight; excludes intermediate fibres, yarns and fabrics, smart/electronic textiles, PPE, medical devices and toys; the obligation to register the DPP rests with the economic operator placing the product on the EU market, the manufacturer or the importer where the manufacturer is outside the EU; mandates GTIN product and GLN facility identifiers plus HS/TARIC codes; requires material composition, recycled content, substances of concern, durability/robustness score and care information). Timeline (textile delegated act expected early 2027, DPP obligations phasing in from around mid-2028): EU Digital Product Passport, "Textiles and apparel digital product passport," accessed 21 June 2026. Apparel industry calls this week for flexibility on data-carrier and presentation rules reported by Just-Style, 19 June 2026.