Eco Age urges PFAS disclosure on clothing tags across UK and EU

If a jacket is built to shed rain and a sneaker is treated to resist stains, the tag should say whether PFAS did the job. Eco Age’s The Forever Label made exactly that argument at the European Commission during Together in Action 2026, pushing UK and EU regulators to require PFAS disclosure on physical hang tags and digital product listings.

The demand is blunt because the chemistry is blunt. PFAS are a vast class of thousands of synthetic chemicals, and EFSA says they are used for water-, grease- and stain-resistant properties in products including water-repellent clothing. Eco Age’s point is that consumers still cannot identify them in garments because brands do not disclose them. In practice, that means the market keeps selling performance without telling shoppers what is actually inside the finish.

That would hit the most exposed categories first: outerwear, footwear, waterproofing agents, and any textile built around durable water resistance or stain protection. Once PFAS disclosure becomes a point-of-sale rule, brands would have to force mills and chemical suppliers to hand over real ingredient data, not just the usual vague sustainability copy about protection, performance, or lower impact. The obvious next step is verification, because a label is only useful if it can be traced back through the supply chain and matched to the digital product page. That is where the European Commission’s work on the Digital Product Passport starts to matter, since the consultation launched on 9 April 2025 was designed to improve transparency and sustainability through standardized product information.

The regulatory pressure is already tightening around the edges. ECHA says the EU and EEA PFAS restriction proposal was submitted on 13 January 2023 by authorities in Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden, then consulted on from 22 March to 25 September 2023. In August 2025, ECHA said it aimed to complete its scientific evaluation by the end of 2026. Denmark has gone further, with a ban on the import and sale of PFAS-containing clothing, footwear and waterproofing agents set to begin on 1 July 2026. The UK released its first PFAS Plan in February 2026, a sign that the issue is no longer floating in the abstract.

That is the point of The Forever Label: stop letting performance fabrics hide behind vague claims and make chemistry visible at the rack, on the tag, and on the screen. For brands still leaning on water-repellent finishes without clean disclosure, the compliance shift is coming fast, and the weak links will be the suppliers who cannot prove what is in the coating.