The short version
- The environmental cost of clothing is a public, voluntary scheme in France: a number in impact points, calculated free of charge with the government’s tool, and declared on a public portal.
- On 1 October 2026, two transition periods end. Communicating a score about the environmental impact of a garment then obliges you to communicate the official cost as well.
- On the same day, anyone may calculate and communicate the environmental cost of your products, without your consent, using available or estimated data.
- Two clean ways out: calculate and declare your products, or remove your scores. Leaving things as they are is not one of them.
Run this test before reading on. Take the barcode of your best-selling textile product and type it into the search of the public environmental labelling portal. Either the product is there, because its manufacturer or the business that placed it on the market declared it. Or it is not, and from 1 October a third party will be able to calculate and communicate its environmental cost without asking for your consent.
Then open the page for that same product on your site. Look for a number, a letter, a gauge or a badge that talks about environmental impact. If you find one, this article concerns you before 1 October.
What the environmental cost is, in three ideas
A number, in impact points. The French decree of 6 September 2025 defines it as a whole number greater than zero that aggregates greenhouse gas emissions, harm to biodiversity, and the consumption of water and other natural resources across the product’s whole life cycle, from raw material production to end of life. The higher it is, the greater the impact. According to the French ministry, the label carries two figures: the total cost, and the cost per 100 grams of garment, like the price per litre of a fruit juice.
Durability is part of the calculation. A coefficient between 0.67 and 1.45 adjusts the result according to two criteria that relate to the brand’s practices rather than to the garment itself: the breadth of its range, meaning the number of products it sells, and how far it encourages repair. For an identical garment, a brand that sells a very large number of products and does not encourage repair gets a higher cost.
It is voluntary, and it stays that way. No brand is obliged to display its environmental cost. But anyone who chooses to display it has to respect a framework: declare the product on the portal before any communication, update it no more than once every three months, follow the official display format, and keep the evidence behind the calculation available to inspection officers.
What changes on 1 October
The decree set a transition period until 1 October 2026 for two of its rules. During that period, they only applied in limited cases.
| Rule | Until 1 October 2026 | From then on |
|---|---|---|
| Communicating an environmental score (art. D. 541-245) | Obliged you to also communicate the official cost only if the manufacturer or the business placing the product on the market had already calculated and communicated it | Obliges you in every case to also communicate the official cost, without the score contradicting it or causing confusion with it. If the score appears on a physical medium, so must the official cost |
| Calculating the cost of someone else’s products (art. D. 541-244) | Possible only with the manufacturer’s consent, or if the manufacturer had published that cost on the portal | Possible for anyone, using available data or data estimated from it |
The display rules, set out by the French ministry, add a constraint on form: online as in store, the official visual must be at least as large as the figures of the price, and, whatever the medium, at least as large as any other aggregated environmental impact score communicated for the same product. Your in-house rating cannot be more prominent than the official figure.
A safeguard in the other direction If you are the manufacturer or the business placing the product on the market and you calculate the environmental cost of a product yourself, that is the figure anyone communicating about it must use, and anyone already communicating a different figure has one month at most to update it. Publishing your own is therefore not just a constraint: it is the means the decree gives you to set the number that circulates about your products.
The blind spot: scores you do not call scores
A score does not have to be called an “eco-score”. It can take the form of a carbon footprint badge, an impact rating or gauge, a percentage of water saved, or a “sort by impact” filter on a category. These elements are often added to sell, without being thought of as a regulated statement. From 1 October, if they amount to a score within the meaning of the decree, they trigger the obligation.
The decree does not define the word “score”. The French ministry, for its part, presents the environmental cost as the same kind of quantification as a price, a nutritional value or a carbon score in kilograms of CO2 equivalent. Our reading, to be safe: any figure, letter or grading that relates to an environmental impact should be treated as a score. A simple mention of material, such as “organic cotton”, does not rate an impact; it falls under the rules on environmental claims, which we cover in a separate article.
Two points in the text widen the scope. First, the obligation applies to anyone who voluntarily communicates a score, not only to the brand: a retailer displaying a manufacturer’s rating is concerned in the same way. Second, a score communicated on a physical medium, a label or packaging, requires the official cost to appear on a physical medium too. It is the same movement as with product safety: the product page has become a regulatory document, and every line added to it to sell also commits you.
The method, in one day for the textile catalogue
- Take an inventory of everything that looks like a score. Product pages, category listings, filters and sorting, confirmation emails, content sent to marketplaces, labels and packaging in stock. Everything a buyer sees counts, not only your site.
- Decide product by product. A product, within the meaning of the decree, is a version whose units all share the same colour, composition, shape and texture: size variations do not create a new product. Calculate where the figure serves you, remove the score everywhere else.
- If you calculate: the public tool Ecobalyse is free and asks for product-specific parameters, such as the type of garment, the materials and the country of manufacture. Declare the product on the portal before any communication, display it in the official format, and keep the evidence behind the calculation: inspection officers can ask for it.
- If you remove: everywhere, including content sent to marketplaces and future label print runs. And before replacing the score with environmental wording, reread the rules on environmental claims.
- Date it and keep watch. An environmental cost may not be updated more than once every three months, and must be updated within twelve months if the official method changes, unless it has been printed on the product or its packaging. From October, also keep an eye on what the sites that list your products display about them.
A ten-minute self-diagnosis: open your three most visited textile product pages and note everything that quantifies, rates or grades an impact. Then search their barcodes on the portal. A score on the page and no declaration on the portal is a decision to make before 1 October.
The options, and what they are worth
| Option | What you get | Who it suits |
|---|---|---|
| Remove all scores before 1 October | The quickest: you are no longer subject to the obligation to display the official cost. But a third party remains free to calculate the cost of your products | Brands with no particular environmental argument to defend |
| Calculate and declare the whole textile catalogue | The figure in circulation is yours, and anyone communicating about your products must use it. Requires reliable composition and origin data for each product | Brands with a short range, that encourage repair, and whose durability coefficient works in their favour |
| Calculate the most viewed products, remove scores elsewhere | Covers the pages that matter for a fraction of the work. Any score left on a product that has not been calculated becomes a defect | Wide catalogues with a small team |
| Leave things as they are | Every product displaying a score without the official cost no longer complies with the decree from 1 October | No one |
Tooling
The calculation itself is free and public. What takes work is keeping it up to date on a catalogue that changes. If you are looking for a tool to help, four criteria are enough: it calculates per product within the meaning of the decree, without multiplying sizes; it exports to the data schema published on the portal; it dates each calculation and keeps the version of the method used; and it can place the official visual at the right size wherever another score appears.
Method comes before the tool: a correct calculation displayed on the wrong product, or an in-house rating left next to an undeclared product, and all the effort turns against you.
The bigger picture
Until now, the question was whether you wanted to display the environmental cost of your clothing. From 1 October, a third party can calculate it in your place, and the question becomes: who calculates it, with what data, and is it the figure you would have chosen. The information published on the portal can also be looked up by barcode and reused under an open licence: environmental information is leaving the product page to become public data. It is the same movement as the digital product passport.
For an online retailer, the lesson goes beyond textiles. Reference prices, product safety, environmental claims, environmental cost: every line of a product page is now a statement you must be able to back up. It is a project we handle in our e-commerce and marketplaces expertise, and it always starts with the same inventory: knowing what your product pages already claim.
Sources
The verifiable claims in this article link to their primary source, consulted on 24 September 2026. We do not cite a source we have not read. All four sources are in French.
- Decree no. 2025-957 of 6 September 2025 on the methods for calculating and communicating the environmental cost of textile products, articles D. 541-240 to R. 541-246 of the French Environment Code, Légifrance. View
- French Ministry for the Ecological Transition, “Affichage environnemental sur les vêtements”, updated 27 March 2026. View
- Environmental labelling declaration portal, search by barcode. View
- Ecobalyse, the public environmental cost calculator. View
FAQ
I do not only sell clothing: am I concerned?
For your textile products, yes, and only for them. According to the French ministry, most clothing categories are covered, and a few, such as bras or puffer jackets, remain to be addressed. You are concerned as soon as you communicate a score on one of these products, or if you want to control the figure a third party might communicate about them.
“Organic cotton”, “recycled material”: is that a score?
In our reading, no: a mention of material describes a composition, it does not rate an impact. It therefore does not trigger the obligation to display the environmental cost. It remains subject to the rules on environmental claims, which we cover in our article on green claims.
Can a competitor really publish the environmental cost of my products?
Yes, from 1 October, using available data or data estimated from it, while respecting the conditions the decree sets for any communication of the environmental cost. If you are the manufacturer or the business placing the product on the market and you calculate the cost of a product yourself, that figure prevails, and anyone communicating a different figure has one month at most to update it.
Can Dotsland help?
Yes. An inventory of what your product pages, feeds and labels already claim, a product-by-product decision between calculating and removing, then integration of the official visual where it has to appear. It is part of our e-commerce and marketplaces expertise. Let’s talk, or start with the three-page self-diagnosis.