The Sports & Fitness Industry Association (SFIA) joined leaders in the sportswear, performance apparel, footwear, and fashion industries on a letter pushing for the adoption of digital labels. Hard labels are out-of-date and offer limited space for including information. Digital labels can be more comprehensive, offering unlimited information to consumers. With a myriad of reporting requirements around the globe, compliance with labeling laws is constantly evolving. The challenge of keeping labels current with new laws creates difficulties for manufacturers; moving to digital labels will provide greater flexibility in meeting requirements on consumer education. Including information on a product’s care, content, importer requirements, and country of origin on a single label is difficult and hard for consumers to read. Digital labels solve this problem by providing consumers with a website or QR code that contains individual country reporting requirements and additional consumer information.
Labels require 5.7 million miles of label tape annually, enough for 12 roundtrips to the moon, and creating cloth labels generates 343,000 metric tons of CO2 a year. Oftentimes, labels are removed from products for comfort and the information is lost forever. The bottom line is cloth labels leave a significant environmental footprint that can be eliminated. Moving to soft labels will remove the environmental harm created by cloth labels, providing greater flexibility for manufacturers and offering consumers a better platform for receiving product information.
Click here to view the full letter.
For more information, please contact Bill Sells, SVP Government Relations & Public Affairs, at [email protected].