Lightening the legislative burden
As green claims rules tighten, claims must be “specific, evidenced, proportionate and easy for consumers to understand”, says Read. This includes the language used across Rab’s product pages, hangtags and marketing materials, which connect directly back to evidence, supplier documentation, certificates and internal review processes. “If a claim cannot be substantiated clearly, we should not make it.”
That is where the operational burden becomes heavier. A scope certificate may prove that a supplier is certified, Retraced’s Seiffert says, but it does not prove that the certified material reached the product being advertised, or arrived in the quantity being claimed. That evidence has to exist per product and per order.
Philipp Mayer, CPO and co-founder of Retraced, says a single garment claim can rest on documents from a fiber producer, spinner, mill and garment factory. Every processing step may require a certified facility, while each material transfer requires its own transaction certificate. Those documents arrive as PDFs and scans, often in different languages and formats. Retraced launched Certified Materials Management in May, positioning it as an AI tool to reconcile certified material claims across purchase orders, transaction certificates, and shipments. The company says Patagonia and Columbia Sportswear are currently rolling it out.
While Mayer says the AI can read, connect and flag inconsistencies across supplier certificates, invoices and packing lists, Retraced keeps humans in the loop for sense-checking purposes. A flagged quantity gap could be a split shipment, or it could mean the certificate does not cover the goods.
Such certification marks and software platforms can help brands organize the evidence that legal, sourcing, compliance or marketing teams will eventually have to stand behind, even as the compliance responsibility remains with the brand.
Building company and consumer trust
In 2026, brands are increasingly carrying a heavy compliance load — from Ecodesign for Sustainable Product Regulation and Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, to ECGT and state-level rules in the US — each with different thresholds and timelines. Faced with this mounting pressure, Oswald says, they are now asking Bluesign for guidance on how to comply correctly, as opposed to doing groundwork for them. “[Brands want] someone they trust to tell them what applies to them, what it means in practice, and what they should actually do about it,” she says.
The trust problem extends far beyond mere regulatory compliance. “If a consumer does not understand what a claim means, they cannot meaningfully trust it,” Oswald says. “They are trusting a symbol, which is not the same thing.” Bluepass, she argues, has to carry different levels of depth for different consumers: a simple signal for someone glancing at a hangtag, and more detail for someone who wants to know what is in a child’s clothing or how a product was made.
Meanwhile, Lisa Bergstrand, founder and director of Bergstrand Consultancy, says tighter environmental claims rules appear to be making some brands, including those doing serious sustainability work, less willing to communicate for fear of being accused of greenwashing. She warns that “greenhushing” could ultimately damage collective progress if sustainability drops out of the conversation and investment follows it down.
