Regulatory guide
Article 24 of the EU Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation requires large economic operators to disclose information on unsold consumer products discarded as waste.1 Five categories of information, reported annually, with a twelve-month publication window after financial year-end. The standardised Annex I format under Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2026/2 applies to financial years starting on or after 2 March 2027.2 This guide covers what to report and how to build the audit trail.
ESPR obligations are time-staged across three milestones. Each shifts what a large economic operator must do, and when.
Article 24 of Regulation (EU) 2024/1781 (the ESPR) is the disclosure obligation: large economic operators placing products on the EU market must publicly report information on consumer products they have discarded as waste, broken down by product category.1 Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2026/2, published in the Official Journal on 10 February 2026 and applying from 2 March 2027, defines the standardised Annex I format that any disclosure must follow once it is in scope.2
Article 24(1) lists four substantive categories of information; combined with the entity-identification header required by Annex I of the Implementing Regulation, that is five practical fields to populate in every disclosure.
Article 24(1) ESPR plus Annex I header under Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2026/2
Name of the legal entity (the standalone undertaking or, for consolidated disclosure, the parent), the European Unique Identifier (EUID) established by Directive (EU) 2017/1132 where available or an alternative identifier from an officially recognised Member State scheme,8 the type of disclosure (standalone or consolidated, with subsidiaries listed where applicable), and the financial year start and end dates.
Number of units and total weight of unsold consumer products discarded, per product category. The default reporting granularity is the 2-digit Combined Nomenclature (CN) code, the level at which most apparel (CN 61, CN 62) and footwear (CN 64) are reported. Annex II of Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2026/2 lists categories that require 4-digit reporting; for textile-related products this includes home textiles (CN 6301-6307), leather apparel (CN 4203), furskin apparel (CN 4303), and paper apparel (CN 4818).2 The Annex I template also includes a per-line flag indicating whether packaging is included in the disclosed weight.
The reason each unit was discarded. Where destruction occurred under a derogation, the disclosure must reference the applicable derogation from Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2026/296.3 If units of the same product category are discarded for different reasons, a separate line is required for each reason. If destruction occurred after 19 July 2026 for an Annex VII product without any applicable derogation, the brand is in breach of the Article 25 destruction ban.
The proportion of discarded products directed to each downstream pathway, calculated on the basis of weight: preparing for reuse, recycling, other recovery (including energy recovery), disposal, and unknown. Recycling, other recovery, and disposal together constitute total destruction. Information must be retrieved from the waste-treatment operators that collected the products; where it cannot be obtained, the line is reported as unknown but flags a traceability gap to authorities.2
Two text fields: measures taken in the preceding financial year to prevent the destruction of unsold products, and measures planned for the future. The forward-looking field must, in particular, address how the brand intends to prevent destruction of the categories destroyed in the preceding year for the same reasons.2
Disclosures are published on a publicly accessible page of the economic operator's website. Article 2(2) of the Implementing Regulation also allows operators bound by sustainability reporting under Article 19a or 29a of Directive 2013/34/EU (the EU Accounting Directive), or that publish such reports voluntarily, to include the Annex I information within that sustainability report and link to it from the website.2 Supporting evidence and the documentation demonstrating delivery and reception of discarded products must be retained for five years.2 For destruction under a derogation, the supporting documentation must be retained for five years after destruction and made available to competent authorities in electronic form within thirty days of receipt of the request.3
Four dates structure the obligation.
18 July 2024 is the entry into force of Regulation (EU) 2024/1781.1 From this date the legislative framework is in effect, though the operational obligations under Articles 24 and 25 are time-staged.
19 July 2026 is when the Article 25 destruction ban takes effect for large economic operators.1 Under Commission Recommendation 2003/361/EC, an enterprise is an SME if it has fewer than 250 employees and either annual turnover not exceeding €50 million or an annual balance-sheet total not exceeding €43 million; a large enterprise is therefore any enterprise that has 250 or more employees, or that exceeds both the €50 million turnover and €43 million balance-sheet thresholds.6 Apparel, clothing accessories, and footwear sit within the scope of Annex VII of the ESPR. From 19 July 2026, destroying unsold products in these categories is prohibited for a large economic operator unless one of the ten derogations applies and is documented.
2 March 2027 is when the standardised Annex I disclosure format under Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2026/2 begins to apply. Critically, the format applies to products discarded in financial years that start on or after that date.2 For a brand on a calendar-year financial reporting period, the first financial year fully covered by the standardised format is FY2028 (running 1 January to 31 December 2028); the first standardised Annex I disclosure is therefore due by 31 December 2029.
The substantive Article 24 disclosure obligation itself, however, is already in force.1 The European Commission's own press release of 9 February 2026 confirms that the rules on disclosure under the ESPR already apply to large companies.4 Large economic operators on a calendar-year reporting period should already be preparing an Article 24 disclosure for FY2025 (due by 31 December 2026) and FY2026 (due by 31 December 2027), in a free-form layout, with the Annex I template not yet mandatory. Aligning these interim disclosures with the Annex I structure now is the cheapest path to forward-compatibility.
19 July 2030 is when the Article 25 destruction ban extends to medium-sized economic operators (under Commission Recommendation 2003/361/EC, those with 50 to 249 employees and either annual turnover not exceeding €50 million or balance-sheet total not exceeding €43 million, and which do not qualify as small).16 The Article 24 disclosure obligation is expected to extend to medium-sized operators on the same timeline.
Article 25 of the ESPR prohibits the destruction of unsold consumer products in the categories listed in Annex VII (apparel, clothing accessories, and footwear).1 Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2026/296, formerly Commission document C(2026) 659, adopted by the Commission on 9 February 2026 and published in the Official Journal on 22 April 2026, sets out ten exhaustive derogations in its Article 2.3 If none applies, destruction is prohibited and the brand is exposed to Article 25 penalties as well as the reputational consequence of disclosure under Article 24.
The product is a dangerous product within the meaning of Regulation (EU) 2023/988 (General Product Safety Regulation).
The product is unfit for purpose because it is non-compliant with Union or national law for reasons other than safety, and destruction is required by law or is the appropriate and proportionate corrective action.
The product infringes intellectual property rights, evidenced by a final judicial decision, an alternative dispute resolution outcome, a notification by a rights holder or competent authority, or an internal investigation, provided the infringement can be duly substantiated.
The product is subject to a valid and enforceable IP licence or similar contractual restriction whose specified period has expired, and destruction is the appropriate and proportionate response.
The product is unsuitable for preparing for reuse or remanufacturing because it is technically unfeasible to remove or permanently render inaccessible labels, logos, or recognisable design characteristics that are IP-protected or considered inappropriate (for example, ethically problematic or contrary to prevailing social norms).
The product is unacceptable for consumer use due to physical damage, deterioration, or contamination (including hygiene issues), and repair or refurbishment is not technically feasible or not cost-effective.
The product is unfit for its intended purpose due to design or manufacturing defects for which repair is not technically feasible.
Available only where none of derogations (a) to (g) applies. The product was offered for donation either directly to at least three suitable social-economy entities located within the Union, or on an easily accessible page of the brand's website for a minimum period of eight weeks, and was not accepted.
The product was received as a donation by a social-economy entity located within the Union, but the entity itself could not find a recipient for it.
The product was made available on the market after being prepared for reuse by a waste-treatment operator, but no recipient could be found.
Each derogation requires substantiated documentation, the specific form of which is set out in Article 3 of the Delegated Regulation: safety assessments or test reports for derogation 1; self-assessment statements for derogation 2; legal documentation for derogations 3 and 4; inspection records and quality-assessment evidence for derogations 5, 6, and 7; donation offers, social-economy declarations, and waste-treatment-operator documentation for derogations 8, 9, and 10.3 Article 4 of the Delegated Regulation additionally requires the economic operator to provide a statement on the applicable derogation to the waste-treatment operator that receives the product.3
Rework, refurbishment, repair, and prepared-for-reuse operations all sit upstream of these derogations. The regulatory logic is sequential: brands must attempt to keep products in use before destruction becomes legal under any derogation, and recital (3) of the Delegated Regulation makes clear that where a derogation does apply, destruction must follow the priority order of the waste hierarchy in Article 4 of Directive 2008/98/EC (Waste Framework Directive), prioritising recycling over other recovery and disposal.37 Article 24 disclosure makes both the attempt and the hierarchy visible.
The Article 24 disclosure is downstream of the operational data. If the data does not exist at unit level by financial year-end, it cannot be reconstructed in time for the publication deadline.
The audit trail must be assembled as the rework operation runs, not after the fact.
Five operational disciplines produce a defensible Article 24 disclosure.
Every product entering the rework or disposition decision flow needs a stable identifier, typically the original SKU plus a per-unit serial or batch code. The CN-code reporting requirement in field 2 of Annex I means SKUs must be mappable to CN codes; this mapping is straightforward for brands with mature PIM systems and a known gap for brands relying on spreadsheets.
Each transition (received from store, triaged, sent to workshop, reworked, returned to retail, donated, recycled, disposed) carries a timestamp, an operator identifier, and a status code. This is what authorities will reconstruct if they query the disclosure: the path the unit took from store-pull to final disposition.
A photograph at triage and at the point of disposition is the cheapest defensible evidence of condition. For derogations 5, 6, and 7 (IP-protected branding, damage, manufacturing defect), photo evidence dated and tied to the unit identifier is regulator-grade alongside the inspection records the Delegated Regulation requires.
Field 4 of Annex I requires the breakdown by treatment pathway, calculated on the basis of weight. The 10% verification threshold means the operator's records must align with the brand's records within that tolerance. Confirmations should be issued by the operator with the brand's batch reference, the weight processed, and the treatment-pathway code. Where a destruction derogation applies, the brand must also issue an outbound statement to the waste-treatment operator identifying the derogation, per Article 4 of the Delegated Regulation.3
For any unit destroyed under one of the ten derogations, the supporting evidence (assessment report, donation offer record, IP documentation) must be retrievable in electronic form within thirty days of an authority's request, and retained for five years.3
The audit trail is not a separate compliance task. It is the operational record of running the rework process.
The brands that will struggle with Article 24 disclosure are the ones running rework on spreadsheets and email, where unit-level status changes are not captured systematically and waste-treatment confirmations live in inboxes rather than in a database.
Flexireo was co-developed over two years with a multinational sporting goods brand, processing more than 50,000 products through the platform. The disclosure structure of Annex I maps directly onto the operational data the platform captures.
| Annex I field | Flexireo data source |
|---|---|
| 1. Entity identification | Configured at organisation level: legal entity name, EUID, type of disclosure flag, and financial year dates inserted automatically into every disclosure export. |
| 2. Product information by CN code | SKU-to-CN-code mapping configured at product onboarding; unit count and weight aggregated per disclosure period; packaging-included flag captured per intake batch. |
| 3. Reasons for discarding (with derogation reference) | Captured at triage as the derogation code under Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2026/296;3 required field for any unit routed to destruction; defaults blocked if rework or alternative disposition is possible per the triage decision engine. |
| 4. Waste-treatment operations | Workshop and operator network includes treatment-pathway tagging (preparing for reuse, recycling, other recovery, disposal, unknown); each disposition records the pathway code and the receiving operator, including the outbound derogation statement required by Article 4 of the Delegated Regulation. |
| 5. Preventive measures | Aggregated annually from rework volumes processed, late-stage embellishment workflows configured, demand-forecasting integrations, and root-cause records on the units that did reach destruction. |
The output is a CSV and PDF export aligned with the Annex I format. For brands using Flexireo only for rework operations and no destruction pathway, the disclosure shows zero destruction volumes for the CN codes covered by Flexireo-managed product flows; this is the outcome most apparel brands are working toward.
Flexireo does not handle Article 24 disclosure as a separate workflow. The disclosure data is a byproduct of running the rework operation.
For batches that pass through ESPR-only documentation (rework managed elsewhere, only the disclosure data tracked in Flexireo), a one-time fee of €90 per project applies.
ESPR Article 24 sits within a broader EU regulatory programme that apparel brands need to track in parallel.
Article 25, the destruction ban itself, is the companion obligation. Article 24 is what you disclose; Article 25 is what you cannot do.1 For large economic operators placing apparel, clothing accessories, or footwear on the EU market, the destruction ban takes effect 19 July 2026.
The Digital Product Passport (DPP) for textiles is a separate ESPR delegated act, expected for adoption in late 2026 or early 2027 with an 18-month transition. The DPP will require unit-level data on material composition, substances of concern, and traceability.
The rework lifecycle data captured for Article 24 disclosure feeds the repair and maintenance history fields of the DPP.
AGEC in France (the anti-waste law) is a national French regime that pre-dates the ESPR. It has been in force since 1 January 2022 for non-food unsold products.
ESPR does not supersede AGEC; the two regimes overlap. AGEC retains stricter extended-producer-responsibility mechanics through Refashion and SYDEREP; ESPR introduces stricter disclosure standardisation.
Brands selling in France need to track both.
The longer-term regulatory direction is consistent across all three instruments: unit-level traceability of products from manufacture through disposition becomes the default. Brands that build the audit trail for Article 24 will find DPP implementation substantially less painful than brands starting from scratch in 2027.
The European Commission's 9 February 2026 press release and the European Environment Agency's 2024 report quantify the volume of unsold textiles the regulation is trying to redirect. In France alone, around €630 million worth of unsold products are destroyed each year; the figure originates in a 2014 joint study by ADEME and L'Agence du Don en Nature, cited in the Commission press release.4
Book a 30-minute demo and we will map the ESPR Article 24 disclosure flow to your current rework operation. We will show you which fields you can already populate, where the gaps are, and what an audit-defensible record looks like for the financial year you are reporting on now.
The DPP textile delegated act, expected fields, QR/NFC carriers, and the EU Central DPP Registry.
Read the explainer →Primary sources cited inline above. Links open in a new tab.
Disclaimer. This page is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. EU regulations and their implementing acts are amended frequently.
Although Flexireo reviews its regulatory pages against the latest consolidated versions of the cited acts, errors are possible and the law may have changed since this page was last reviewed. Readers should consult the primary sources linked above, and seek qualified legal advice before relying on any statement on this page.
Page published 13 May 2026; last reviewed 13 May 2026.