Ecobalyse: 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 Ecobalyse, the French State's 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. Each result is then set against the yearly footprint of one European citizen, and the results are weighted and added 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.
The Ecobalyse method
Ecobalyse is the French State's calculator for the environmental cost of a product, published by the ministry's sustainable-development directorate (CGDD) and by ADEME, the French agency for ecological transition. It is open-source and free to use. Its textile method takes the European Product Environmental Footprint as its base and changes it in four ways.
- The weighting. Climate change keeps its PEF weight of 21.06%, freshwater ecotoxicity is raised to the same 21.06%, and the two human-toxicity categories are set to zero.
- Two complements the PEF does not have. Microfibre release, at 1,000 impact points per kilogram of reference material, and garments exported outside the EU and not reused, at 5,000 impact points per kilogram.
- A durability coefficient between 0.67 and 1.45, which lengthens or shortens the days of use the calculation assumes. In the regulatory method it depends on the brand's incentive to repair and on the breadth of its range.
- The unit. One impact point is one millionth of the annual environmental impact of a European inhabitant. It is defined by analogy with the PEF point but is distinct from it, so the two are not comparable.
The affichage environnemental portal
A brand that displays the figure first declares it on the State portal, affichage-environnemental.ecobalyse.beta.gouv.fr, with the breakdown by impact category, the durability coefficient, the product reference, the date of calculation and the method version. Data can be deposited by spreadsheet upload, a form or an API, by the brand or by an organisation it delegates.
A declared figure can be updated at most once every three months, and must be updated within twelve months of a change in the method. The published layer is reusable under an open licence. Some garments are outside the method, among them garments with electronic components and those where more than 20% of the mass is made of materials the method does not model.
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. From that date it applies in every case.
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.
When it appears on 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 has a different scope, the one the European regulation sets. The two meet when a passport shows an environmental figure for a garment sold in France: that is the environmental communication the decree asks to pair with the environmental cost.
This is why in Tramaproof, once the cost is deposited on the State portal, the public passport of a garment sold in France carries it in impact points, with the official mark and a link to the product's page on the portal. Inside the platform the same figure serves you earlier still, to compare products and to prepare the deposit.
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.
The State's figure, and the file for the portal.
The number Ecobalyse returned
In a nightly run, Tramaproof asks the State's Ecobalyse calculator for each garment's figure and shows the one it returns, with the day it answered and the method version. Where the calculator has never answered, Tramaproof shows its own estimate, smaller and marked as provisional. No grade and no letter are added.
On the portal's own template
Tramaproof builds the file for the affichage environnemental portal on the portal's published template, for one product or a whole collection. A garment the portal would refuse is left out and listed with its reason. The brand deposits the file itself and records the date in Tramaproof.
The effect of a change, first
The fields that move the figure most are the weight, the country of each stage and the fibre. Simulations show what a different supplier or fibre would do to the footprint before the change is made.
Questions about Ecobalyse and the French environmental cost
Is displaying the environmental cost mandatory in France?
No. Display is voluntary. What is not voluntary is consistency: whoever communicates any environmental score on a textile sold in France must also communicate the official environmental cost, and from 1 October 2026 that duty applies without conditions. A brand that communicates no environmental score is outside it.
Is Ecobalyse the same as the PEF?
No. It starts from the PEF, then changes the weighting, sets the two human-toxicity categories to zero, adds microfibres and exports outside the EU, and divides the result by a durability coefficient. Ecobalyse shows a PEF-weighted score separately because the two differ.
Can someone else publish my products' environmental cost?
From 1 October 2026, yes. Any person may compute and communicate the environmental cost of a textile reference from the data available. If the brand then publishes its own figure, that figure is the one others must use, and they have one month to update.
Does Tramaproof deposit the figure on the portal for me?
No. Tramaproof prepares the file on the portal's template and tells you which garments the portal would refuse and why. The brand deposits it and records the date in Tramaproof.