Article key points: 

• The Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) is the European Commission’s standardized method for measuring and verifying the environmental impact of products across their entire lifecycle.
• PEF evaluates 16 environmental impact categories spanning ecosystems, human health, and natural resources, and provides a comprehensive framework that’s standardized and verifiable to prevent greenwashing.
• While not yet mandatory, PEF will likely be the basis for future EU regulations. Organizations that adopt PEF methodologies now will gain valuable product impact and supply chain insights and be better positioned for future compliance requirements.

As environmental regulation continues to evolve across the European Union, and beyond, consumer goods companies are facing increasing pressure to understand and prepare for product-level sustainability requirements. One of the most influential frameworks shaping this landscape is the Product Environmental Footprint (PEF)—a standardized methodology devised by the European Commission to assess the environmental impacts of products across their full lifecycle.

Over the past several years, the PEF has moved from being a pilot framework to a central reference point for how the EU thinks about product-level environmental impact assessments and reporting. While the PEFCR for Apparel & Footwear was finalized in mid-2025, the methodology, underlying datasets, and implementation details continue to evolve, creating both opportunity and uncertainty for brands, retailers, and manufacturers.

While information about the PEF is plentiful, it can also be technical and dense. This guide explains what PEF is, how it applies to apparel and footwear companies, what data it requires, how regulatory timelines are unfolding and what businesses should be doing today to prepare responsibly.

Introduction to the Product Environmental Footprint (PEF)

The Product Environmental Footprint is one component of the European Commission’s Environmental Footprint (EF) methods: standardized, scientific tools that calculate reliable and verifiable environmental impact information for both specific products and entire organizations. 

The PEF is a valuable tool for brands, retailers, and manufacturers interested in accurately measuring the environmental impacts of a specific product. Its creators say it will provide businesses with a way to truly assess their own environmental impact while also giving consumers the ability to make informed purchasing decisions based on accurate environmental impact data. At the same time, the PEF will help prevent greenwashing by giving companies a way to prove their environmental impact claims through a standardized and verifiable framework.  

What is the PEF?

The Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) is a method that the European Commission, the EU’s primary executive body, developed to quantify the environmental effect of products across their entire lifecycle from raw material extraction to end-of-life disposal.  

The PEF evaluates products across 16 environmental impact categories, spanning ecosystems, human health, climate change, natural resources, and water. Its goal is to enable consistent, reproducible, and verifiable environmental assessments—reducing greenwashing and improving comparability across product impacts.

Unlike many voluntary sustainability metrics, the PEF is designed to serve as a regulatory-grade methodology, capable of supporting future legislation and labeling schemes.

Who does the PEF apply to?

The PEF is applicable to all businesses globally, as an alignment framework, although the scope of regulatory requirements based on the PEF will likely be limited to companies doing business in the EU. While the PEF is not yet mandatory for these businesses, EU-wide regulations are constantly evolving, and brands, retailers, and manufacturers that want to stay ahead of compliance to reduce business risk associated with their products’ environmental impacts can use the current PEF recommendations as a guidepost for future requirements.  

How the PEF works: lifecycle scope and impact categories 

The PEF is designed to capture the environmental impact of a product across its entire lifecycle from resource extraction through the end of its life. These stages include: 

• Raw materials extraction 
• Processing
• Manufacturing
• Packaging
• Distribution
• Use
• Maintenance 
• Disposal
• Recycling and recovery

The PEF looks at 16 different categories that each influence every product’s environmental footprint across its lifecycle. These environmental impact categories are: 

• Ecosystems
  • Acidification
  • Terrestrial Eutrophication
  • Freshwater Eutrophication
  • Marine Eutrophication
  • Freshwater Ecotoxicity
• Human Health
  • Ozone Depletion
  • Human Toxicity Non-Cancer Effects
  • Human Toxicity Cancer Effects
  • Particulate Matter
  • Ionising Radiation
  • Photochemical Ozone Formation
• Climate Change
  • Global Warming
• Natural Resources
  • Mineral Resource Depletion
  • Non-Renewable Energy Resource Depletion
  • Land Use
• Water
  • Water Scarcity Footprint

What are the phases of a PEF study? 

There are four key phases of a PEF study: Defining the goal and scope of the study, compiling the life cycle inventory, conducting the life cycle impact assessment, and interpreting and reporting the results. After these steps are completed, the final phase of a PEF study is to conduct environmental footprint verification. 

What are Product Environmental Footprint Category Rules (PEFCRS)? 

While the PEF methodology, established by the European Commission, defines how environmental impacts should be calculated and reported, Product Environmental Footprint Category Rules (PEFCRs) define how PEF is applied and implemented to specific product categories, such as Apparel & Footwear.

PEFCRs provide sector-specific instructions to compliment the general PEF method, ensuring:

• Standardization: unifying industries around a single environmental assessment framework
• Relevance: identifying the most significant environmental impacts for specific product types
• Comparability: setting clear and consistent rules that allow for reliable comparability between different products in the same “category”

As of this writing, the European Commission’s website divides the PEFCRs into three categories:

The Apparel & Footwear PEFCR

In the Summer of 2025, the Apparel & Footwear PEFCR was finalized and approved by the European Commission. It defines how environmental footprints must be calculated for apparel and footwear products, including detailed rules for materials, manufacturing processes, durability, logistics, and use-phase assumptions.

The final PEFCR for the Apparel & Footwear category can be read in its entirety. 

The European Commission states that it is constantly updating and revising PEFCRs to keep up with new data, market developments, and to improve the scientific reproducibility and verifiability of its assessment models. As a result, for apparel and footwear brands today, preparing for the PEF is less about running a calculator, and more about building the right underlying data structure that can withstand any methodological changes.

What data does the Apparel & Footwear PEFCR require?

To produce a compliant PEF study under the Apparel & Footwear PEFCR, companies must organize detailed, product-specific data from across the value chain.

Mandatory Data:

• Product Type: Mapped to one of the 13 PEFCR sub-categories
• Product Weight: The net weight of the final product
• Bill of Materials (BOM): Covering at least 95% of the product’s weight, including 100% of main fabrics, lining, padding, electronics, and metals.
• Unsold Consumer Goods: The percentage of unsold products, as a company-level average over the last three years
• Air Cargo: Company-level data on air cargo distances and the share of product mass transported by air

Mandatory if Available:

• Manufacturing Facility Energy Mix: The specific energy mix used in key production steps
• Manufacturing Loss Rates: Specific loss rates for processes like spinning, knitting, weaving, dyeing, and finishing
• Product Process Types: Details like yarn type, textile formation (knit/woven), and specific  finishing techniques
• Upstream & Downstream logistics: pacific transport distances, modes, and shares for raw materials and finished goods

Recommended Data:

• Durability Test Results: Physical test data is required to calculate the Intrinsic Durability Multiplier (IDM) and improve your product’s lifetime score.
• Repairability Information: Data on repair costs and services needed to calculate the Repairability Multiplier (RM)

Optional Data:

• Packaging Data

• End of life Data

Collectively, these requirements mean that PEF readiness hinges on data completeness and data management.

Is the PEF mandatory? 

PEF is not considered a blanket regulatory requirement for all products or companies.

Compliance with the Apparel & Footwear PEFCR is:

• Optional for internal assessments

• Mandatory only when a specific EU regulation, Member State measure, labeling scheme, or claims regime explicitly references the PEF or the PEFCR

As of January 2026, PEF results are limited to business-to-business (B2B) communication and cannot be used for consumer-facing environmental claims.

Why the PEF is in transition: dataset and methodology updates

While the Apparel & Footwear PEFCR have been released, the underlying Environmental Footprint (EF) database and method are in a transition period. The EF 3.1 database license has expired, and the European Commission is now revising the overarching EF method—applicable to all sectors, beyond just apparel and footwear—with significant changes expected in summer 2026, including new indicators and end-of-life modeling updates.

Most PEF calculators on the market today rely on EF 3.1 datasets, which expired at the end of 2025. Current expectations are that core EF datasets will be available in January 2027, while sector-specific datasets remain unavailable on the same timeline, creating a sizable gap between EF 3.1 and EF 4.0 availability. The Technical Secretariat is expected to make a decision on a temporary database approach in February 2026, but will take effect later in the year, subject to the European Commission’s legal review and completion of the EF method amendment.

What this transition means:

• PEF calculators that rely on EF 3.1 datasets are no longer permissible
• Methodology assumptions may change, and previous calculations may need to be redone
• Comparability across tools and PEF scores is currently limited

For this reason, many apparel and footwear companies are shifting their focus from producing early PEF scores to building PEF-ready data foundations that will remain valid as the methodology evolves.

What should companies be doing today?

The most resilient way to prepare for PEF today is to organize complete, structured, and re-usable product-level data. Companies that invest in scalable systems capable of supporting PEF data requirements will be best positioned to adapt quickly once updated PEF methodologies are approved by the European Commission.

Where can I learn more about the PEF?

The European Commission has a comprehensive website with a large number of resources related to both the PEF and the OEF. The following are direct links to some of the most useful information: 

Overview of the Environmental Footprint Methods (consisting of both PEF and OEF)

Infographic explaining what data you need to conduct the PEF, and where to obtain it

Recorded webinars and slide decks in multiple languages 

The role of PEF in today’s world

As interest in social and environmental impact continues to shape consumer preferences and regulatory landscapes, the PEF represents a significant step toward standardized, science-based environmental assessment. 

Organizations that proactively engage with the PEF methodologies today will not only be better prepared for future compliance requirements but will also gain valuable insights into their supply chains and production processes. By embracing the comprehensive approach that the PEF offers, businesses can make meaningful progress toward reducing their environmental impact while potentially discovering opportunities for innovation, cost savings, and market differentiation. 

If you’re looking for ways to prepare for PEF requirements, calculate product impacts at scale, or get better data from your supply chain partners for greater understanding of your social and environmental impact, contact Worldly today. 

Prepare your data foundation for the PEF with Worldly

As the Product Environmental Footprint framework continues to evolve—through updates to the EF methodology, database decisions, and category rules—the organizations best positioned for future PEF requirements will be those that already have complete, well-structured product and supply chain data. Worldly supports this preparation by helping brands and retailers connect product, material, and process-level information into a single, connected system. This foundation enables teams to understand data gaps, improve data quality, and align internal systems with the requirements outlined in the Apparel & Footwear PEFCR as they mature.

If you’re evaluating what PEF readiness looks like in practice, the Product Impact Calculator (PIC) is worth exploring as a way to centralize product impact data, strengthen methodological consistency, and prepare your organization to generate credible PEF outputs once the final method and datasets are confirmed.