The European Union’s approval of the Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) methodology on May 16, 2025, represents more than regulatory housekeeping. The development signals the beginning of a period where transparency becomes the ultimate advantage.
Matteo Ferretti, CEO of PR firm Spynn, sees this development as a watershed moment that will change how fashion brands communicate their environmental credentials.
“The EU’s PEF approval is more than compliance. It creates a new language of authenticity that media outlets and consumers have been desperately waiting for,” Ferretti observes.
Standardized environmental metrics will change sustainability from marketing fluff into hard news, creating new opportunities for genuinely sustainable brands to dominate media channels.
Beyond Marketing Speak
Fashion has operated for decades under the fog of green claims, a murky place where every brand could claim sustainability without meaningful verification. The EU’s standardized methodology changes this by providing journalists with concrete, comparable data points.
This change mirrors what happened when nutrition labels became mandatory for food products. Suddenly, health claims became verifiable, and genuinely healthier products gained a clear edge.
The timing could not be more critical. Fashion generates 92 million tons of textile waste every year, yet consumers have struggled to distinguish between genuine environmental leaders and clever marketers.
The PEF methodology creates the end of greenwashing’s golden age when authentic sustainability becomes the only sustainable marketing strategy. However, the EU has explicitly prohibited companies from using PEF scores in consumer-facing communication or advertising. The restriction means brands must find alternative ways to use their environmental performance data for media coverage, while the methodology remains primarily for industry use.
The Media Multiplication Effect
Ferretti’s prediction of a media boom rests on understanding how journalists operate when attention becomes scarce. Environmental stories often struggle for coverage because they lack concrete, newsworthy angles. The PEF methodology solves this problem by creating a steady stream of rankable, comparable data that changes abstract environmental concepts into concrete news stories.
“Journalists love rankings, comparisons, and clear winners and losers,” Ferretti explains. “The PEF gives them exactly that. Fashion’s environmental leaderboard updated in real-time.” This dynamic will create the sustainability news cycle, where environmental performance becomes as newsworthy as quarterly earnings.
The methodology’s impact extends beyond traditional environmental reporting. Business journalists will cover the competitive implications, technology reporters will explore the measurement techniques, and consumer journalists will translate the implications into shopping guidance.
The multi-angle coverage creates omnipresent sustainability, a media environment where environmental performance becomes impossible to ignore.
When Performance Becomes Public
The EU’s standardized approach will likely trigger a sorting process in which fashion brands are divided into distinct categories based on their environmental performance and communication strategies. Leaders will use their performance data for maximum media impact, while laggards will either invest heavily in improvement or retreat from sustainability claims altogether.
The sorting process creates opportunities for brands willing to embrace radical transparency. Companies that proactively share their environmental data, explain their improvement strategies, and acknowledge their challenges will find themselves set as thought leaders.
Brands seeking to understand how to get featured in Vogue, Elle, Harper’s Bazaar, and other prestigious publications that like to cover sustainable fashion will discover that authentic environmental leadership provides the most compelling narratives these outlets crave.
The methodology also levels the playing field for smaller, genuinely sustainable brands that previously could not compete with larger companies’ marketing budgets. When environmental claims become verifiable through standardized metrics, a small organic cotton producer with excellent performance can generate more credible coverage than a fast-fashion giant with questionable practices.
The Performance-Innovation Cycle
Ferretti anticipates that the PEF methodology will accelerate the development of sustainable materials and production processes, creating a secondary wave of media opportunities.
“When environmental performance becomes measurable and comparable, it drives advancement the same way fuel efficiency standards drove automotive development,” he notes.
This cycle will generate continuous news opportunities as companies develop new materials, processes, and technologies to improve their environmental footprint. The methodology changes sustainability from a static marketing claim into a dynamic arena where improvement becomes newsworthy in itself.
One specific company that created leather alternatives from mushroom roots exemplifies this trend. The breakthroughs already generate significant media coverage, but standardized environmental metrics will make their advantages more concrete and newsworthy. Similarly, textile recycling companies will find their breakthrough moments amplified by clear environmental performance data.
Performance-Based Storytelling
Many fashion brands will recognize that the EU methodology requires a complete shift in communication strategy. Instead of making broad sustainability claims, successful companies will hire a PR team to get in Vogue, Elle, and other influential publications by crafting stories around specific environmental achievements and improvement trajectories.
Ferretti predicts that environmental performance will become as central to fashion PR as design excellence or celebrity endorsements. This shift will reward companies that invest in both environmental performance and sophisticated communication strategies.
The methodology also creates opportunities for collaborative storytelling, where brands partner with suppliers, technology companies, and even competitors to tell larger stories about industry change. These collaborative narratives will prove more enticing to journalists than isolated company achievements.
Market Forces for Good
Ferretti’s prediction ultimately rests on an optimistic view of market dynamics. Transparency accelerates positive change by making excellence visible and mediocrity unsustainable. The EU’s PEF methodology provides the infrastructure for this acceleration, but the real change will come from brands that embrace transparency as an advantage rather than a regulatory burden.
The media boom Ferretti envisions goes beyond more coverage. Better coverage helps industry professionals make informed decisions and rewards companies for genuine environmental leadership. Environmental performance becomes good for the planet, good for business, good for media, and good for the industry seeking authentic progress.
The EU’s methodology may have started as a regulatory requirement, but Ferretti sees it changing into a catalyst for the kind of authentic, measurable sustainability that both media and markets have been anticipating. Brands will thrive when they recognize transparency as an opportunity to be seized, even within the current restrictions on consumer communication.
Presented by: APG
