Why does environmental labelling inspire confidence?

The textile industry is the second most polluting industry in the world and the fifth largest emitter of greenhouse gases. fifth largest emitter of greenhouse gases. In an era where consumers are demanding more transparency on the origin and composition of products, brands need to make quality information available to increase consumer confidence. Since 2020, the measures taken by the French government to encourage eco-responsible production in the textile sector make environmental labelling a crucial issue for companies.

What is environmental labelling?

According to ADEME, the French Environment and Energy Management Agency, environmental labelling is an initiative launched in 2009 as part of the Grenelle de l'environnement to raise consumer awareness of the environmental impact of products and services. This approach requires manufacturers and distributors to make available to consumers the technical data used to communicate the environmental performance of their products.

How does it work? In the clothing and textile sector, the aim of environmental labelling is to provide a visible and visual indication of the environmental impact of the product.

Environmental labelling is based on three principles:

• An index (A,B,C,D,E) that allows you to compare two products of the same family. For example T-shirts,
• It must be visible to consumers so that they can be informed before purchasing,
• It should allow the environmental impact of products to be compared on the basis of the same information, regardless of the brand.

The aim is for the consumer to have all the necessary information about the product before making a purchase decision, while the brands commit to being transparent about the environmental impact of their products.

Why engage in an environmental display approach?

More and more consumers are asking about the production and design conditions and the materials used in the products they buy. According to a study, four out of five French people consider themselves eco-responsible. Protecting the environment means changing consumer habits, and responsible purchasing favours local consumption and products with low environmental impact. Brands can no longer afford to miss out on transparent and clear information if they want to gain consumer trust.

This approach will soon be disseminated to all players in the sector, as the French government is working on a new regulation on the use of eco-design. mandatory environmental labelling of clothing. The aim is to encourage brands to adopt eco-design while facilitating consumer information.

Like the Nutri-score which assesses food products, the label is based on a grade ranging from A to E according to the ecological impact of clothing. The clothing is given a score based on nine criteria that analyse the life cycle of a product.

For companies, environmental labelling is an in-depth process that includes management, teams and the entire production ecosystem. It is up to the company to contact its suppliers and distributors in order to collect as much information as possible on each stage of the product's manufacture.

Once the environmental impact score has been calculated, the company can use this information and make it available to consumers. However, the company must have a good organisation and efficient tools to effectively disseminate its environmental data.

Managing and disseminating environmental data through Product Information Management

Even if a company has a favourable impact score, it will only be useful if environmental information is shared consistently across all its sales channels.

Indeed, environmental labelling implies new product information to be managed and disseminated, leading to several management issues:

• Product data is managed on several tools within the company (ERP, CRM, Excel) and by several teams (product, e-commerce, photo studio),
• Multiple shared files increase the risk of error, loss and deletion and impact on data quality,
• The formatting of the data is different for different sales channels.

Faced with these constraints, a tool PIM (Product Information Management) is an excellent way to organize product data. The PIM is a tool that allows you to centralize product data, enrich it and distribute it in a few clicks from a single platform. Among its other features, PIM :

• allows you to collect data already present in your information system thanks to the ERP,
• can connect to other data sources via APIs as with a PLM that manages the product lifecycle in terms of product innovation and manufacturing,
• manages the excel files of the suppliers,
• allows you to add images such as score pictograms that enhance the environmental display of your products on your platforms,
• allows for efficient collaboration on editorial content, product descriptions and all notes related to environmental scoring,
• automatically distributes all aggregated data in the right format on your e-commerce channel by adapting to each technology (Salesforce, Magento etc.),
• automatically delivers unified data across all your sales channels.

Thanks to a personalized workflow, each business can manage its data according to its needs. The PIM allows better management of data and product descriptions while facilitating collaboration between teams.

Conclusion

Environmental labelling demonstrates the eco-responsible approach of companies and enables consumers to make informed choices about the products they consume. This implies a new organisation of environmental data for companies, which requires efficient management tools to disseminate quality information across all sales channels.

To help you see how the PIM acts at the heart of environmental information management, watch the replay of our live show on the challenges of environmental labelling with the example of the IDKids and Decathlon brands.

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