Sustainability consultancy for fashion companies
Fashion product compliance. Delivered by consultants.
PPWR, packaging EPR, the UK Plastic Packaging Tax, ESPR, EmpCo green claims and Digital Product Passports — handled as a sourcing discipline, not a sustainability project.
Our Digital Product Passport code was accepted by the EU registry on the day it opened — 20 July 2026.
Built for fashion
A consultancy that collects the evidence behind your products.
Sustainability for fashion is product compliance. It means knowing what each garment is made of, where it comes from, and what you can prove. We work as embedded consultants — 3, 6 or 12 months — inside your sourcing and product teams.
Range reviews that flag at-risk styles
Before you sample, we check which styles fall in scope of ESPR, EPR, the UK Plastic Packaging Tax and green-claims rules in each market.
Supplier evidence that matches the garment
Fibre origin, processing location and composition pulled out of Tier 1 and Tier 2, so the label matches what is in the product and can survive a check.
Packaging data your returns can stand on
Packaging weights, material splits and recyclability captured per component, so PPWR, packaging EPR and UK Plastic Packaging Tax returns are built from evidence, not estimates.
Cover, not consulting theatre
Covering a role you can't fill fast enough.
Fixed-term vacancy, parental leave, or a compliance deadline that landed before the hire did. We start in weeks, with no headcount and no recruitment cycle.
3, 6 or 12 months, scoped like a job
An embedded consultant owns the same remit a permanent coordinator or manager would: packaging and product compliance, reporting cycles, supplier follow-up and internal guidance.
First 30 days: obligation map, data gaps listed, owner named for each.
Someone owns the numbers
Packaging weights, material splits and recyclability collected per component and reconciled against volumes, so PPWR, packaging EPR and UK Plastic Packaging Tax submissions hold up.
First 90 days: packaging dataset built, returns prepared, reporting pack repeatable.
The chasing gets done
We run the follow-up with Tier 1 and Tier 2 suppliers, translate the requests into their language and formats, and close the gaps rather than logging them.
First 90 days: evidence chase closed on priority lines, exceptions escalated with options.
product level evidence
A Digital Product Passport is a data carrier.
The QR code on the label is not the passport. It is the carrier: scanning it resolves to a structured record held against a unique product identifier. The picture shows what a shopper, an auditor or a market surveillance officer sees when they scan a garment — the same file, read at different depths.
Under ESPR the delegated act for textiles sets which fields must be carried, who is accountable for each one, and how long the record must stay available. Badges on a product page are marketing. A Digital Product Passport is a regulated data set with an owner, a date and a source behind every line — and from 2027 it decides whether the product can be placed on the EU market at all.
What sits behind the code
Select a data group to see the kind of entries we collect and hold for it.
example passport entries · Product identity
- GTIN 05012345678900 · GS1 Digital Link
- Model: Wide-leg denim, style DN-402
- Batch 2026-07-WK29 · EU registry ID issued
- Economic operator: brand legal entity and EORI
How we work
From range review to evidence.
In four steps.
Four steps, delivered by a consultant embedded for 3, 6 or 12 months. You find out which styles are at risk, we fix the sourcing data behind them, and you end with a file you can hand to a buyer or a regulator.
Each step has a fixed output and a clear end. Stop at any one of them, or keep the consultant until the obligation is current.
Map the range
Every style checked against ESPR scope, EPR registration and UK packaging obligations, market by market, with the dates each one stops being sellable.
Prove the fibre
Composition, fibre origin and processing location tracked back from product to Tier 1 or Tier 2. We work with your upstream traceability providers and logistics teams so the evidence is collected once and available to your entire team — and your shoppers.
Clear the claims
Recycled, organic and low-impact claims substantiated or withdrawn before trims, tickets and labels go to order. We sanity-check online product descriptions against the regulations in every market you sell into.
Hold the file
Certificates, test reports and passport data in one place, with expiry dates, named owners and a runbook your sourcing team can run. The same file becomes the passport proof pack for auditors and market surveillance.
Scoped against range size, number of markets and supplier count. Consultancy engagement: 3, 6 or 12 months. Fixed output at every step.
How we work
Advisory, backed by a working platform
Market access, obligation mapping, and readiness for ESPR, EmpCo and UK requirements, delivered as a sourcing discipline, not a sustainability project.
Symolem is the consultancy. Symolem-ID is the product verification platform underneath it. Most advisers stop at the recommendation. Ours is tested against a platform that issues Digital Product Passports and holds the verified supplier records behind them.
Answer once. Not forty times.
For fashion and textile suppliers serving UK and EU brands. Every customer asks for the same information in a different format, on a different deadline. We manage incoming customer data and supplier due-diligence requests on your behalf, structure what you already hold, and prepare your facility for verified credential status.
Embedded sustainability manager
Hiring for a Sustainability Manager role but need the work to start now? We embed a specialist consultant for 3, 6 or 12 months to deliver the same scope a full-time hire would own, with fixed outputs and a clear handover.
You have the strategy. You need hands.
You already know what has to happen. What you do not have is the time to pull packaging and product data together, chase suppliers for the missing pieces and write the returns. We take defined workstreams off your desk and report back in your format.
Specialist capability, for as long as the obligation needs it.
Where fashion businesses do buy this capability, they increasingly buy it fixed-term. Six months. Twelve months. The brief is consistent: bring the obligations current, build the processes, train the team, leave. Businesses are not trying to build a permanent function. They are trying to acquire capability and keep it.
There is a reason the market has settled there. Compliance requirements do not arrive at a steady rate or in a single discipline. A brand facing EmpCo needs claims substantiation and trim specification. The same brand a year later needs supplier data collection across Tier 2. A year after that, EPR filings in four jurisdictions and a US state registration nobody had heard of. No single hire covers that range. We resource it the way the problem behaves: a named consultant with the specialism the current obligation needs, for as long as it needs them, and a different specialism when the obligation changes. The bench carries the range so your headcount doesn't have to.
No Compliance Team?
Common in businesses under £50m and in most emerging brands. The obligations apply in full regardless of size. Symolem operates as the function: registrations, evidence, claims and filings run externally, with your product team briefed rather than burdened.
The most common position in heritage and mid-market brands. Your team knows the supply base and can get answers out of it. What is missing is the reading, which regulation applies to which product, in which market, from which date. Symolem supplies the interpretation and the structure; your team supplies the relationships.
One person carrying UK, EU and US across every product category. Capable, and structurally unable to cover it. Symolem takes defined workstreams, a market, a filing cycle, a data collection programme, so the internal lead keeps ownership without carrying the whole surface.
Our system
Product compliance, delivered in five layers.
START is the structure. These are the layers we deliver against it. The obligations attach to products, so the work happens where products are made and bought, in bills of materials, supplier files, trim specifications and purchasing terms. We work across all five layers because a market access position fails at whichever one is missing.
Standards: Which rules apply, and to what
We establish which of your products are in scope of what, in which market, and from which date. ESPR wave scope by category, EmpCo claim rules against what is printed on your tickets and labels, EPR registration status in each market of sale, and the purchasing terms that determine whether you or your supplier is the economic operator. The output is a position, not a score.
Transparency: Digital product identity
We define which products to passport first, what data each one requires, and where in your supply base that data does not yet exist. We sequence Digital Product Passport rollout against your product range and your critical path, and where you already work with a provider we verify their output against the regulation rather than taking it on trust.
Accountability: Evidence that survives scrutiny
Product-level footprint calculation, claim substantiation, and the supplier evidence behind both. Certificates, test reports, declarations and attestations held in one place with expiry tracking and named owners. Measured and documented, not estimated, because the standard is what a regulator or a retailer's onboarding team will accept, not what reads well in a report.
Responsibility: Sourcing, due diligence and who carries the obligation
Multi-tier supplier mapping and due diligence under EUDR, LkSG and CSDDD, and the first mile work that makes the rest possible: getting fibre origin, processing location and material composition out of the tiers where nobody currently has visibility. Alongside it, we advise governments and national programmes on Digital Product Passport and Extended Producer Responsibility design, which is how we know where the regimes are going before they arrive.
Transition: Capability that stays with you
Training, process design and handover, so the obligations are run by your product and sourcing teams rather than by us indefinitely. Runbooks, templates, supplier request cadences and the governance that makes ownership explicit. A compliance function nobody inside the business can operate is not a compliance function.
Let's talk about where you can sell.
Whether you are working out what stops in September, which of your suppliers can evidence what they claim, or who carries the obligation on an FOB order. A 30-minute conversation is the place to start.
After the engagement, your own Symolem ID dashboard.
A bespoke digital twin of your ecommerce range. Every product, every market it sells to, and the regulation status for each one — visible at a glance.
Symolem ID is optional. Most engagements start as people, not software.
Country-by-country clearance
See which products are cleared to sell in the EU, UK and US, and which are blocked by missing evidence or upcoming rules.
Live regulation status
ESPR, EmpCo, EPR, packaging and green-claims rules are mapped to the products and markets they apply to, updated as deadlines shift.
Evidence linked to listings
Certificates, test reports, supplier replies and DPP data sit next to the SKU, so a buyer, regulator or marketplace can trace any claim back to source.
Request platform access
See your range, market by market
Tell us what you sell and where. We'll set up a walkthrough of Symolem ID against a slice of your own range, and show you exactly what lands in your dashboard after an engagement.
- A dashboard row for every style you sell, mirrored from your ecommerce range
- Per-market status — cleared, action needed or blocked — for EU, UK and US rules
- The evidence file behind each status, so you can answer a surveillance request the same day
- A proof pack for auditors — structured evidence behind every claim, ready for a surveillance visit or due-diligence request
- Weekly re-checks against the EU DPP registry, with an email when a status changes
Symolem ID
How the platform keeps your range current.
Straight answers on regulation tracking, evidence sources and market coverage.
Check which markets your products can still enter
A five-minute, no-cost check of your EU, GB, EEA and US exposure.
Your access to each market depends on the product, not just the company.
We track the rules so your product and sourcing teams don't have to.
Great Britain
No ESPR equivalent yet, but the CMA can act directly on misleading environmental claims under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act.
United States
No federal regime — obligations are set state by state, including California's SB 707 textile EPR, the FTC Green Guides, and Proposition 65 chemical disclosure.
EEA / EFTA
Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein take EU acts through the EEA Joint Committee on a different timetable; Switzerland is EFTA but not EEA.
Plain English
The questions we get asked most
Short answers, no jargon. If yours is not here, ask us directly and we will answer it the same way.
Built on the UN/CEFACT UN Transparency Protocol.
Symolem holds a seat on the UN/CEFACT working group developing the UN Transparency Protocol (UNTP), the open standard for verifiable product and sustainability data, and contributed to its public review.