How do you understand environmental labelling?

By 2022, environmental labelling was available on 60.7% of textile and footwear product pages.

There are several reasons why this type of product has been given priority. Historically, this is the type of product that French and European work began with. This means that the assessment methods and databases for this product category are the most advanced.

Footwear and textiles are the product categories most easily renewed by consumers. It is therefore a major challenge to make consumers understand that each product has an impact on the environment.

Shoes and textiles account for the majority of products sold by DECATHLON.

The data as of 31/12/2023 is temporarily unavailable for several reasons:
▪ An IT problem has been underway since December 2023, preventing DECATHLON from viewing the environmental labelling section on its product pages. As a result, it is impossible to extract the number of product pages on which the carbon footprint is displayed as of 31 December 2023;
▪ In addition, the database used to calculate the environmental assessment was updated in 2023, to bring it into line with the development of European standards for the PEF (Product Environmental Footprint) method. The new calculation of the carbon footprint of DECATHLON products required all the data to be sent back from the design tools to the customer display. These massive data transfers take time, as environmental data passes through several digital tools before being made available to customers. 

However,  DECATHLON's objectives are to continue implementing environmental labelling for all textile and footwear products and to reinstate environmental labelling on the product pages of the e-commerce website in 2024, with the aim of achieving 100% of DECATHLON's textile and footwear products having a carbon footprint labelling by 2026.

Yes, it may seem like a lot. But it's important to put these figures into perspective in order to understand them and know how to interpret them. While we use this assessment to measure and reduce the impact of our products, it has also been designed as a tool to help you make the right choices when you buy.

At present, the environmental assessment of our products is only displayed on our textile products. Our aim is to be able to offer you this figure for our entire range.

To help you understand, we're going to compare the average impact of products other than textiles. As you can imagine, the manufacture of a bicycle has a much greater impact than that of a T-shirt. This can be explained by the materials used to design it (and in particular the quantity, and therefore its final weight), by the manufacturing process, and by the actions required to maintain it. On average, for a 'basic' T-shirt (i.e. with no specific technical features) its impact will be around 8.79 kg CO2e. For a bicycle, the average is closer to 96 kg CO2e (depending of course on the model).

To help you see things more clearly, here are some average impacts per product: - Plastic bottle: 1.13 kg CO2e - Helmet: 3.77 kg CO2e - T-shirt: 8.79 kg CO2e - Shoes: 12.28 kg CO2e - Backpack: 19.38 kg CO2e - Trousers: 20.29 kg CO2e - Jacket: 30.70 kg CO2e - Bike: 96 kg CO2e

It may be worth taking other criteria into account. For a bicycle, for example, its lifespan is much longer than that of a T-shirt (our grandparents' bicycles that we have fun restoring are proof of this!). As well as being repaired hundreds of times, it can also become your everyday mobility tool, helping you to reduce your own carbon footprint.

Do you sometimes come across that little "e" behind "CO2"? It's a unit created by the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) to compare different greenhouse gases on the same scale, and give a clear picture of the impact of a product or service.

For example, the IPCC estimates that 1 tonne of methane (a greenhouse gas) is on average 28 times greater in terms of pollution and global warming than 1 tonne of CO2.

To sum up: 1 tonne of methane is therefore counted as 28 tonnes of CO2 equivalent when calculating environmental impact, meaning that 1 tonne of methane = 28 tonnes of CO2e.