Your first ESPR Article 24 disclosure: what a large fashion house actually publishes

A large fashion house on a calendar financial year has already been inside the ESPR Article 24 disclosure duty for a full reporting cycle. The first disclosure covers unsold consumer products discarded during FY2025 and falls in 2026. It is an aggregate figure, differentiated by product type or category, published in a clear and visible manner on the company’s own website.

Two instruments are running on two clocks, and the gap between them is the practical fact for a compliance team this year. The substantive duty at Article 24(1) of Regulation (EU) 2024/1781 started with the first full financial year after the Regulation entered into force. The prescribed format, the category delimitation and the twelve-month publication deadline sit in Implementing Regulation (EU) 2026/2, which applies from 2 March 2027 and attaches to a brand’s own discards later still. The first disclosures are being published with no prescribed shape to follow.

What goes on the page

Article 24(1) binds economic operators that discard unsold consumer products directly or have them discarded on their behalf. It sets four heads.

• (a) “the number and weight of unsold consumer products discarded per year, differentiated per type or category of products”
• (b) “the reasons for discarding products, and where applicable, the relevant derogation under Article 25(5)”
• (c) “the proportion of discarded products delivered, whether directly or through a third party, to undergo each of the following activities”: preparing for reuse, including refurbishment and remanufacturing; recycling; other recovery including energy recovery; and disposal operations, in accordance with the waste hierarchy as defined by Article 4 of Directive 2008/98/EC
• (d) “measures taken and measures planned for the purpose of preventing the destruction of unsold consumer products”

Head (a) asks for two figures, and most of the preparation work sits in the weight. Head (b) reaches every discard, so a brand discarding stock outside the Article 25 prohibition still gives its reason; the ten derogations under Delegated Regulation (EU) 2026/296 apply only where one is relied on. Head (d) asks for prose, and it is the head that gets left out when Article 24 is read as a counting exercise.

The medium is fixed in the same paragraph: “in a clear and visible manner at least on an easily accessible page of their website”. The words “at least” carry weight. An operator publishing sustainability reporting under Article 19a or 29a of Directive 2013/34/EU may include the same information there, and the website remains the minimum.

Article 24 applies to unsold consumer products generally. The Annex VII limitation belongs to the Article 25 destruction ban. A group that also sells beauty, homeware or handbags discloses discards in those categories too.

The financial year your first disclosure covers

One sentence in Article 24(1) fixes the trigger: “That first disclosure shall cover unsold consumer products discarded during the first full financial year during which this Regulation is in force.”

Recital 8 of Implementing Regulation (EU) 2026/2 states the date expressly, referring to the Article 24(1) duty running “from the first full financial year after the entry into force of that Regulation, namely 18 July 2024”. Common fashion year ends land in different places.

• Calendar year end. FY2024 was already running on 18 July 2024, so the first full financial year in force is FY2025, disclosed during 2026.
• 31 January year end, common in fashion retail. The first full financial year runs 1 February 2025 to 31 January 2026.
• 30 June year end. The first full financial year runs 1 July 2025 to 30 June 2026.

Article 25(1) dates the destruction ban 19 July 2026, so a large calendar-year brand was accruing Article 24 data for around eighteen months before the prohibition commenced. Micro and small enterprises sit outside the disclosure duty, and Article 24(1) brings in medium-sized enterprises “from 19 July 2030” without stating which financial year they first report.

Aggregate figures, and the records behind an Article 24 disclosure

Nothing in Article 24 or Article 25 asks for a per-garment public record. What is published is aggregate, differentiated per type or category of products, and three separate record duties sit underneath that figure.

1. Article 24(2) of the Regulation. On request from the Commission or a competent national authority, an operator provides the information and documentation demonstrating the delivery and reception of the products disclosed at point (c), and where relevant the applicability of a derogation. Paper or electronic form, within 30 days. Live now.
2. Article 4 of Implementing Regulation (EU) 2026/2. Delivery and reception documentation, kept five years after the disclosure. Live once that Regulation applies.
3. Article 3 of Delegated Regulation (EU) 2026/296. Documentation supporting a derogation, kept five years after the product has been destroyed and put at the disposal of competent authorities in electronic form within 30 days of a request. Applies from 19 July 2026.

Five years is the retention period in the second and third. Article 24(2) sets no retention period, only the 30 days to produce. Ten years appeared in the draft and still circulates in commentary. The final text says five. Recital 13 of the Delegated Regulation allows documentation to be made collectively where multiple products share the circumstances justifying destruction, so even the derogation file is not assembled product by product.

The 30-day window turns a published aggregate into an evidence exercise on a month’s notice.

When the prescribed format starts to bite

The shorthand “the format applies from 2 March 2027” compresses two dates, and the second one is operative for a brand.

Implementing Regulation (EU) 2026/2 was adopted on 9 February 2026 and, by its Article 7, applies from 2 March 2027. Article 1 narrows what that means: “It shall apply to products discarded in each financial year as from the first full financial year after the date of application of this Regulation. Economic operators shall disclose that information within 12 months after the end of that financial year.”

For a calendar-year brand the first financial year in prescribed format is FY2028, disclosed by the end of 2029. FY2025, FY2026 and FY2027 are all required disclosures and all take the shape the brand chooses. The twelve-month deadline belongs to Article 1 of the Implementing Regulation, and quoting it as an Article 24 requirement puts the obligation about three years early.

Category delimitation also stops being a judgement call. Article 3 delimits the disclosure by the first two digits of the relevant combined nomenclature code, with four digits for the categories at Annex II. The Annex I template asks for the legal entity name and identifier, whether the disclosure is standalone or consolidated, the financial year start and end dates, and per product line the commodity code, description, units discarded and total weight in kilograms, plus a packaging flag, the reason for discarding, the treatment percentages and the measures taken and planned.

The Regulation’s verification annex treats an operator as complying where the difference between the disclosed figure and the one calculated from the documentation received is less than 10 per cent. The disclosed treatment operation is checked against the operations actually carried out by the waste treatment operator that received the products. A brand publishing “recycling” against a stream its contractor sent to energy recovery has a discrepancy on the record, and the tolerance does not cover the treatment route.

Producing the numbers inside a multi-channel business

Article 24(1) requires a count, a weight, a category split, the reasons for discarding, a treatment split and a prevention statement. Two further duties sit outside it, the 30-day production duty at Article 24(2) and the delivery and reception evidence held five years under Article 4 of the Implementing Regulation. Everything after that is operational judgement, and keeping the requirement and the judgement apart is worth doing in front of counsel.

The Regulation does not say who owns the number. Finance usually ends up holding it, because the financial-year boundary is a Finance boundary. The inputs sit elsewhere: the 3PL or WMS holds the disposal instruction, the waste contractor holds transfer and treatment records, the ERP holds the stock write-off, retail systems hold store-level disposals, and the returns platform holds what came back and was never re-listed. None of those systems was built to produce a weight in kilograms by product category.

Most of the build time goes on data the business does not currently hold in the form Article 24 asks for.

• Weight. Fashion master data rarely carries a reliable per-SKU weight, and shipping weight is usually held at carton or consignment level. Getting from a count of scrapped units to a kilogram figure by category is a data exercise with its own plan.
• Commodity codes. A fashion house already classifies its products to the combined nomenclature, for customs and import declarations. That data sits with trade compliance or the customs broker, and the merchandising hierarchy the business plans and reports on has never been mapped to it. Mapping one to the other is a one-off job.

Head (c) asks for a proportion, so the denominator has to be defined and written down for the percentages to be reproducible year on year. Reception-and-treatment statements need writing into disposal contracts before the year they are needed, because standard waste contracts do not produce them.

Where recovered stock sits in the disclosure

The Article 24 trigger is discarding as waste. Recital 3 of Implementing Regulation (EU) 2026/2 ties the obligation to the discarding of unsold consumer products as waste for the purpose of any type of waste treatment operation.

Stock that goes into a garment recovery process, comes back cleaned and conditioned with repair where it needs it, and returns to sale as product has not been discarded as waste at all. It is outside the count at (a), the reasons at (b) and the treatment split at (c).

Stock discarded as waste and delivered for preparing for reuse is inside the disclosure. The carve-out at Article 2(34) is a carve-out from destruction, the Article 25 concept, and what counts as destruction is a separate question from what counts as discarding. Article 24(1)(c) lists preparing for reuse among the treatment activities whose proportion is disclosed, so those volumes sit in the total and show under that head.

Donated product is outside. Recital 3 again: in the case of donation the intention is not to discard, so the disclosure does not cover donated products.

For a compliance team the position in August 2026 is that three disclosures fall due before the prescribed format arrives, and the systems work behind the numbers takes longer to build than the disclosure takes to write. Starting it against FY2026 gives two cycles of practice before the Annex I fields become mandatory.

Opera Garment Solutions is a single point of access to a network of professional garment care experts, cleaning and conditioning returned and unsold stock, with repair where the garment calls for it, in the market where it sold, drawing on garment care expertise that already exists in that market. Brands usually begin with a test box on the categories carrying the most volume, and decide about a 90-day pilot from what comes back.

Questions about the first Article 24 disclosure

When is our first Article 24 disclosure due?

The first disclosure covers unsold consumer products discarded during the first full financial year during which the ESPR is in force. Recital 8 of Implementing Regulation (EU) 2026/2 states that the Regulation entered into force on 18 July 2024, so for a brand on a calendar financial year the first covered year is FY2025 and the disclosure falls in 2026. Brands with a 31 January or a 30 June year end take the first full year on their own calendar, which gives 1 February 2025 to 31 January 2026 and 1 July 2025 to 30 June 2026 respectively.

Do we publish item by item, or by category?

By category. Article 24(1)(a) requires the number and weight of unsold consumer products discarded per year, differentiated per type or category of products. There is no item-level disclosure obligation anywhere in Article 24 or Article 25. Once Implementing Regulation (EU) 2026/2 applies, categories follow the first two digits of the relevant combined nomenclature code, with four digits for the categories listed in its Annex II.

Where does the disclosure have to appear?

Article 24(1) requires it in a clear and visible manner at least on an easily accessible page of the company’s website. A brand publishing sustainability reporting in its management report under Article 19a or 29a of Directive 2013/34/EU may include the information there as well, and once the Implementing Regulation applies its Article 2 permits a website link to that report provided the page states clearly where the information sits. The website is the minimum in every case.

Does the standardised format apply to our first disclosure?

No. Implementing Regulation (EU) 2026/2 applies from 2 March 2027, and its Article 1 limits it to products discarded in each financial year as from the first full financial year after that date. For a calendar-year brand that is FY2028, disclosed within twelve months of the year end. Disclosures for the years before then are still required, and their format is the brand’s own.

Do garments sent for recovery count in the discarded figure?

That turns on whether they were discarded as waste. Recital 3 of Implementing Regulation (EU) 2026/2 states that the disclosure obligation concerns the discarding of unsold consumer products as waste. Stock recovered and returned to sale as product has not been discarded and does not appear in the disclosure. Stock discarded as waste and delivered for preparing for reuse does appear in the total, reported under preparing for reuse in the treatment split at Article 24(1)(c). Donated products are not covered.

How long do we have to keep the records, and which records?

Three duties with three different triggers. Article 24(2) of the Regulation requires information and documentation to be produced to the Commission or a competent national authority within 30 days of a request. Article 4 of Implementing Regulation (EU) 2026/2 requires evidence of the delivery and reception of discarded products to be kept for five years after the disclosure. Article 3 of Delegated Regulation (EU) 2026/296 requires documentation supporting a derogation to be kept for five years after the product is destroyed and produced in electronic form within 30 days of a request. Five years is the period in the final texts; the ten-year figure that still appears in commentary came from the draft.

References

1. Regulation (EU) 2024/1781 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 13 June 2024 establishing a framework for the setting of ecodesign requirements for sustainable products, Official Journal, 28 June 2024. Articles 2, 24 and 25, Annex VII.
2. Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2026/2 of 9 February 2026 laying down rules for the application of Regulation (EU) 2024/1781 as regards the details and format for the disclosure of information on discarded unsold consumer products, Official Journal, 10 February 2026. Recitals 3, 6 and 8; Articles 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 7; Annexes I, II and III.
3. Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2026/296 of 9 February 2026 supplementing Regulation (EU) 2024/1781 by setting out derogations from the prohibition of destruction of unsold consumer products, adopted as C(2026) 659. Recital 13; Articles 2, 3 and 6.
4. Directive 2008/98/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 19 November 2008 on waste, Article 4, waste hierarchy.
5. Directive 2013/34/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 26 June 2013 on the annual financial statements, consolidated financial statements and related reports of certain types of undertakings, Articles 19a and 29a, sustainability reporting in the management report.

( About the author )

Joanna Lambert

CEO & Co-Founder, Opera Garment Solutions

Joanna Lambert is CEO and co-founder of Opera Garment Solutions, which recovers returned, damaged and unsold clothing for fashion brands across the EU and the UK from hubs in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Spain. She writes on the EU destruction ban and on what returned stock is worth when it goes back to sale.

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