France asks for a figure before Europe asks for a passport.
Since 1 October 2025 a brand selling clothing in France may display the environmental cost of its garments. The figure is a single number, expressed in impact points and computed with a public method from data the brand declares. Display is voluntary. Two conditions in the decree, however, make it far less optional than it sounds.
What it measures
The environmental cost is a single number. Behind that number sits a life-cycle assessment of the garment across sixteen impact categories, among them climate, water, fossil resources, eutrophication and pesticide use. The results are normalised against the annual footprint of a European citizen and then weighted together.
The French method then adds what a life-cycle assessment does not capture on its own. There are three corrections: microfibre release, the durability of the garment, and the fate of used textiles exported outside Europe.
The result is displayed with an official graphic mark, without colours and without classes. It is built to be read the way a price or a calorie count is read: the lower the better, and two garments can be compared directly. The weight of the garment enters the calculation, so you need to know it.
Voluntary, but not for everyone
The decree leaves display free, and then adds a condition that changes the picture. A brand that voluntarily communicates a score on one or more environmental impacts of a textile product must also communicate that product's environmental cost. If the first claim appears on a physical medium, the environmental cost has to appear on a physical medium too.
In practice the obligation follows your marketing. Any environmental claim printed on a swing tag brings the environmental cost onto that tag with it.
Until 1 October 2026 that condition only applies if the brand has already calculated and communicated the environmental cost for the references concerned. After that date it no longer waits.
What changes on 1 October 2026
Two transitional limits fall on that day. The first: a third party may compute and publish the environmental cost of your products without your consent. The second: the duty to pair the environmental cost with any other environmental communication applies in full.
The consequence is worth following through. The method is public, and for every field a brand has not declared there is a default value. Those defaults are deliberately conservative, which in practice means unfavourable.
A brand that has not declared its supply chain will therefore be scored on defaults, by somebody else, with no say in the result. The voluntary period is the window in which your own data still decides your own number.
Where the data comes from
The inputs to the calculation are the same ones the European passport needs. The method asks for the country where each stage took place, the material and its origin, the weight of the garment, and how it travelled.
A brand that can name its supply chain can compute a real environmental cost. A brand that cannot gets the defaults. It is the same underlying work, asked for twice by two different rules, and that is exactly why it is worth doing once and doing it properly.
Why it never reaches the public passport
The environmental cost is a national scheme. It is computed with a national method and displayed with a national mark. The European passport carries what the European regulation asks for, and nothing else.
This is why in Trama the French figure lives inside the platform. It is there for you, to compare products and to file in France. It does not appear on the public passport page.
Three fields decide your number more than any others.
The weight of the garment, not an estimate
The calculation is based on the weight of the garment. If you do not have it, it starts from a sector average — which almost never plays in your favour. It is the easiest figure to recover, and it is also the first one needed.
The country of each stage, not only of the manufacturer
Spinning, weaving, dyeing and making-up weigh differently depending on where they happen: the energy a country makes its electricity with enters the calculation. The same garment, made in two countries, has two different figures.
The fibre and where it comes from
"100% cotton" says what the garment contains, not how that cotton was produced — and on impact that is the second thing that makes the difference. It is the point where a commercial sheet is no longer enough and the supplier's real document is needed: a certificate, an analysis, a declaration of origin.