The AGEC law: how to prepare (2025 update, environmental labeling, textile obligations)

Jul 16, 2026

The French Anti-Waste for a Circular Economy law (AGEC), enacted in February 2020, aims to transform production and consumption in depth, to limit waste and preserve natural resources, biodiversity and the climate. This ambitious law is being phased in across many sectors (single-use plastics, food, electronics and more), including the textile industry. Every year since its adoption, new regulatory obligations have come into force to push companies and retailers to reduce waste and favour recycling. 2025 marks an important milestone for textile, with the generalization of an environmental display on products and other key obligations. How do you prepare effectively? Here is a tour of the AGEC requirements for textile, and the solutions to meet them.

What is the AGEC law?

The AGEC law (10 February 2020) is part of France's ecological transition. It sets out to end disposable plastic, fight waste, act against planned obsolescence and better inform consumers. Concretely, the law introduces many measures spread over time: progressive bans on certain single-use plastics, encouragement of bulk sales and deposit-return, a reinforced Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR), and more. Its overall objective is to reduce the amount of waste generated and promote a circular economy where products, materials and resources are reused or recycled rather than thrown away.

Within this framework, better informing the consumer is a strong axis of the law: making the environmental impacts of products visible to guide purchasing choices. AGEC thus provides, among other things, for a readable environmental display for certain products, and imposes new transparency obligations in several consumer sectors.

The key obligations for the textile sector in 2025

The textile sector is particularly concerned, with several measures designed to reduce its footprint and waste. The main ones to know:

Environmental product sheet. Since 1 January 2023 (for large companies), any brand placing clothing or household linen on the French market must provide, at the moment of purchase, a digital product sheet detailing the environmental qualities and characteristics of each model. The sheet is accessible online (for example via a QR code) and lets the consumer buy with full knowledge.
Information to display to the consumer. The sheet must contain several mandatory pieces of information for each textile article: the percentage of recycled material incorporated; the product's recyclability; the geographic traceability of the main manufacturing steps (at minimum the country of weaving or knitting, of dyeing or printing, and of making-up; for footwear: stitching, assembly and finishing); the presence of plastic microfibres if the product contains more than 50% synthetic fibres; and, where applicable, the presence of hazardous substances above 0.1% of the product's mass, with the substance named.
Regulated environmental claims. It is forbidden to display misleading wording such as "biodegradable" or "environmentally friendly" without solid proof. AGEC has proscribed this greenwashing since 2022, and decree 2022-748 specified the ban in April 2022.
Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR). Clothing textile falls under an EPR scheme (via the eco-organism Refashion): brands must indicate whether an ecological bonus or penalty applies to each concerned model, and the information must be accessible to the consumer.
Ban on destroying unsold goods. Since 1 January 2022, fashion brands can no longer destroy unsold stock (clothing, footwear, household linen). Article 45 of AGEC made this practice illegal: unsold products must go to reuse, second-hand or recycling. A world first in fashion.
Application calendar. The display obligation phased in by company size: from 1 January 2023 for textile companies above 50M euros of turnover (and 25,000 units per year); from 1 January 2024 above 20M euros (and 10,000 units); and from 1 January 2025 from 10M euros and 10,000 articles sold per year. In other words, from 2025 almost the whole sector is covered, including many SMEs. Non-compliance exposes the company to administrative fines up to 15,000 euros (for a legal entity), plus the risk of criminal sanctions for misleading environmental claims (up to 10% of average annual turnover). Beyond the financial penalties, the image damage of proven non-compliance or greenwashing can cost far more in the long run.

In short, from 2025 every textile brand must have these displays and information processes in place. That means significant data collection work on products and their manufacturing, and adapting labels and consumer information channels.

Environmental display: an eco-score for garments from 2025

One of the most emblematic developments for 2025 is the deployment of the environmental display for textile products. Provided for by AGEC and the 2021 Climate & Resilience law, the measure is materializing after several years of experimentation. The textile eco-score starts on a voluntary basis and is being extended progressively to the whole sector. France is thus the first country to make this environmental display progressively unavoidable for fashion, anticipating future European regulation.

What is the environmental display? A synthetic rating of a product's ecological impact, computed over its whole life cycle, from raw material production to end of life. The principle is to reflect the "environmental cost" of an article via a clear index on the product. The higher the score, the greater the impact. The ambition is threefold: inform the consumer, encourage eco-design, and ultimately reduce the sector's environmental impact.

How is the score computed? The methodology relies on Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and the European Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) adapted to textile (PEFCR Apparel & Footwear). It accounts for many indicators (CO2 emissions, water pollution, resource depletion, biodiversity impact and more), possibly weighted for textile-specific issues such as plastic microfibre release or garment durability. The result is a single aggregated score, updated periodically.

For brands, this eco-score is a major technical and organizational challenge: data collection must reach far up the supply chain, from fibre origin to spinning, dyeing, assembly and transport. Without rigorous digital traceability, computing the score is nearly impossible. Many companies therefore turn to shared platforms or blockchain-secured solutions to protect data integrity and mobilize suppliers, sometimes down to spinners and weavers, to gather reliable data on every step of the product's life.

The eco-score, while demanding, is also an opportunity for virtuous players: a product with an excellent rating will stand out with environmentally sensitive consumers, can justify a premium positioning, and strengthens the brand. Conversely, failing to anticipate exposes you to a poor environmental grade, damaging for reputation and sales. It is in every textile company's interest to prepare this display now and build eco-design into collections, rather than suffer the constraint at the last minute.

Prepare now: what solutions for compliance?

First, it is crucial to structure product and supply chain data collection. The globalized, fragmented nature of textile makes tracking complex: a garment sold in France may use a raw material from one country, be woven in another, dyed and made up elsewhere, through many intermediaries. AGEC requires at minimum three key manufacturing steps (weaving, dyeing, assembly). Supplier diversity, the opacity of some subcontractors, language and cultural barriers are all challenges. Yet solutions exist to start the compliance journey today.

Among them, traceability platforms are particularly effective: a centralized tool to aggregate, verify and share data from every actor in the chain. Blockchain-based traceability, for instance, facilitates collaboration between partners while guaranteeing the integrity of transmitted information (immutability, update history). Such platforms standardize the collection of the required environmental data, automate certain checks (anomaly alerts) and simplify the restitution of this data to consumers.

Crystalchain: a dedicated module for AGEC compliance

Crystalchain is a traceability platform built for complex supply chains such as textile. For more than 9 years, we have helped brands map their supply chains, trace manufacturing steps and control their suppliers' certificates.

To answer the requirements of Article 13 of the AGEC law, we developed a dedicated "AGEC Law" module. It lets brands:

Collect and centralize the mandatory information (recycled materials, country of weaving, dyeing, assembly, and so on).
Automate the consumer restitution via a unique QR code pointing to a dedicated web page.
Guarantee regulatory compliance with a secured audit trail, updated in real time.

This module is a simple, fast first step to be compliant. It also fits a growth path: towards Supplier Mapping, to extend visibility beyond tier 1 with a dynamic supplier map; and towards Batch Traceability, to trace each lot or order with verifiable proof at every step.

More than an obligation: a strategic opportunity

With this module, brands can be compliant within weeks. Above all, they lay the foundations of a broader traceability strategy that lets them reduce supply chain scandal risk, improve sourcing decisions, and prepare today for the environmental display and the Digital Product Passport.

In conclusion, the AGEC law is not only a regulatory constraint. It is also an opportunity to structure internal processes, strengthen consumer trust and showcase CSR commitments. Crystalchain already supports many fashion and retail brands in this transformation, turning compliance into a genuine competitiveness lever.