The Forever Label campaign is calling for European clothing brands to label ‘forever chemicals’ on clothing, warning that tightening PFAS restrictions alone is not enough to protect consumers
While EU regulation tightens around forever chemicals, consumers at the point of sale are still being kept in the dark; and nowhere is the gap clearer than in clothing. Despite increasing warnings about the financial, environmental, and health impacts of PFAS pollution, there is currently no EU labelling requirement for brands to declare that a garment contains PFAS.
Sustainability consultancy Eco Age is working to tackle this gap with the launch of The Forever Label campaign. Eco Age’s campaign calls for mandatory PFAS disclosure on clothing and textiles – the same standard already in place for allergens in food and ingredients in cosmetics.
To learn more about the campaign, The Innovation Platform spoke to Marwa Zamaray, Partner and Executive Director at Eco Age and an EU Climate Pact Ambassador.
Can you highlight the scale of the threat of PFAS pollution from clothing?
It is hard to overstate. PFAS are a class of thousands of synthetic chemicals, used across the textile industry for water, stain and grease resistance, and durability. They have now been found in human blood, breast milk, rainwater, and across every environmental medium tested. The European Environment Agency identifies textiles as one of the biggest sources of PFAS pollution in Europe, with releases at every stage: manufacture, every wash, and disposal.
The human cost is now quantified. A European Commission study published in January 2026 puts the cost to society of continued PFAS pollution at around €440bn by 2050 if there is no regulatory action. Treating polluted water alone would cost more than €1tn. The Commission calls even this a conservative estimate, because its health figures cover only a handful of currently regulated substances out of the thousands in use. The groups most at risk are newborns, children, people living near contaminated sites and the workers on them.
The exposure route through clothing is real. A peer-reviewed study in Environmental Science & Technology detected PFAS in all 72 stain-resistant children’s textile products it tested, with school uniforms carrying significantly higher levels than many other children’s items.
Do you think the issue of PFAS-containing clothing is often overlooked, compared to other areas of PFAS?
Yes, and closing that gap is exactly why the campaign exists. Public awareness has caught up on other fronts. People know about PFAS in drinking water, and they have started to ask about it in food packaging and cosmetics. The one question they still cannot ask, in a shop or on a website, is whether the clothes they are buying for their children contain them.
Families living with contamination are told to ask what is in their water. They cannot ask the same about a school blazer, a raincoat, or a pair of trainers. Clothing sits against the skin, is worn all day and washed repeatedly, yet it remains one of the least visible exposure routes in the public conversation. That is the transparency gap.
What is The Forever Label campaign and what is it designed to achieve?
The Forever Label is an Eco Age campaign calling for mandatory disclosure of PFAS on all clothing and textiles sold in the EU, on physical hang tags and on digital product listings, with the UK held to the same standard. If a brand has used PFAS in a garment’s manufacture, treatment or finish, the shopper should be able to see it before they buy. It is the same basic principle already applied to allergens in food, risk in financial products, and ingredients in cosmetics.
Crucially, this does not ask brands to generate new information. The data already exists inside supply chains, in chemical management systems, and in the documentation that moves between mills, finishers, and manufacturers. It is simply not surfaced, because nothing requires it to be. Disclosure also does work that bans alone cannot. It moves the cost of opacity back onto the brands that benefit from it, gives retailers a reason to interrogate their supply chains now rather than later, and gives parents, teachers, and school procurement officers something they can act on this season.
Are you working directly with manufacturers to encourage and action change?
Eco Age is a sustainability consultancy for fashion, luxury and lifestyle brands, so working with industry is core to what we do. We designed the campaign to work with the brands that have already acted, not against them. A label creates commercial pressure on the laggards, because the many brands that have moved away from PFAS finally have a way to say so on the product itself. Patagonia, The North Face, Adidas, and Jack Wolfskin are among those already shifting to PFAS-free alternatives, including bio-based coatings and fluorine-free water-repellent finishes. That makes the argument that performance categories cannot function without PFAS increasingly hard to defend.
What response have you received from the campaign so far?
The Forever Label made its European debut at the European Commission during Together in Action 2026 in March, where it drew engagement from Climate Commissioner Wopke Hoekstra and Kurt Vandenberghe, Director-General for Climate Action. Vandenberghe recognised the campaign’s alignment with the EU’s climate and sustainability agenda, and Rasmus Nordqvist, the Danish Green MEP, backed its call for stronger chemical transparency in fashion. The campaign is now focused on the coming wave of EU legislation on chemical transparency in textiles, and on pushing the UK to align rather than drift.
What do governments and governing bodies need to do to tackle PFAS contamination in the clothing sector?
Three things.
First, close the disclosure gap now. As things stand, there is still no EU or UK rule requiring a clothing label to tell shoppers whether a garment contains PFAS. Existing textile labelling rules cover fibre composition only, and the European Environment Agency has warned that consumer textiles carry no safety data sheet obligation, which weakens traceability once these chemicals are inside a finished product. Labelling should apply to every product still on the market while restrictions phase in.
Second, follow through on restriction, and do it coherently. France’s ban is in force, Denmark’s begins in July, the universal EU restriction is moving towards adoption with ECHA’s scientific opinions due by the end of 2026, and UK MPs have called for a 2027 phase-out. But the picture is fragmented across France, Denmark, the wider EU and the UK, and it sits well above the consumer’s line of sight. The principle is already accepted. The UK’s PFAS Plan commits to improving transparency and public understanding of PFAS, and the Environmental Audit Committee has gone further, recommending a phased restriction on PFAS in non-essential consumer goods from 2027, including school uniforms, with standardised labelling on products still on sale. The direction of travel is set. The label is the missing piece.
Third, the UK must not fall behind. The Environmental Audit Committee has warned that, under UK REACH, Britain is already lagging behind the EU on PFAS. The UK should match the EU standard rather than drift into a slower, less legible regime.
