RM Sustainability Consulting

RM Sustainability Consulting Helping fashion & textile SMEs turn complex sustainability regulations into simple, practical steps that unlock opportunities.

DPPs | CSRD | ISO14001 | B Corp | Carbon Reports | Certified B Corp Business I work with fashion and textile businesses that want to do sustainability properly, not just look good on paper. I support SMEs through B Corp certification, GHG assessments, Ecovadis, DPPS, Net Zero strategies, waste reduction projects, and social impact initiatives that actually mean something. From mapping supply chain

s and measuring Scope 3 emissions, to redesigning take back schemes and managing B Corp applications start to finish, I bring structure, clarity, and a sense of humour to what can otherwise be an overwhelming process. Clients include independent brands, manufacturers, and purpose led platforms. Whether they’re getting ready for CSRD, need help translating impact into comms, or want a trusted expert on speed dial, I help them go further, faster.

26/05/2026

And that fact is making a lot of brands very relaxed.

Here is why that relaxation is expensive.

WRAP and the UK Textile Pact published a ten point blueprint in early 2026 setting out exactly how a mandatory UK textile EPR scheme should work. The direction is clear. Manufacturers, importers, and retailers will register as obligated producers. You will report sales data by material type and volume. You will pay fees that fund collection and recycling infrastructure.

The legislation has not landed. But the architecture has been designed.

If you wait for the legislation before you start preparing, you are choosing the compressed timeline. The one where everyone scrambles at once and the consultants are all booked and the costs are higher because you are doing it in a rush.

If you start now, you get the calm timeline. The one where you already know your numbers, your exposure, and your plan before the law even passes.

Here is one thing you can do today: calculate how many textile units you placed on the UK market last year. That number will be the basis of your future EPR obligation. If you do not know it, that is the problem.

The compliance quiz in my bio takes ten minutes and tells you where your gaps are.

Most brands think they know their waste rate. Almost none of them do.Not because they are careless. Because nobody has e...
21/05/2026

Most brands think they know their waste rate. Almost none of them do.

Not because they are careless. Because nobody has ever actually measured it in one place.

Waste sits across purchasing, warehouse, finance, and end of season decisions. Each team holds a piece of it. Nobody holds all of it. So the estimate is always lower than the reality.

Here is what I typically see when a brand maps its waste properly for the first time.
One product category is doing most of the damage. Unsold stock is almost never spread evenly across a range. It concentrates.

One or two lines drag the average up and nobody has noticed because nobody is tracking by category.

Returns are not all the same reason. When brands break them down by damage, fit, and change of mind, they almost always find one fixable cause driving a disproportionate share. And the fix is usually operational, not a product redesign.

The disposal route they feel good about is often the most expensive one. Donation sounds free. It is not once you count transport, sorting, and administration. Most brands have never compared the actual cost per route.

None of this is visible until you measure it.

That is the point of the RM Impact Ledger. Not a software platform. Not a massive project. One structured report that turns scattered data into decisions you can actually make.

The carousel above walks through the three patterns. Save it for your next ops or buying review.

Comment IMPACT and I will walk you through what an Impact Ledger looks like for a brand at your stage.

19/05/2026

You started your brand because you cared about making good products.

Not about Extended Producer Responsibility schemes. Not about eco modulated fee structures. Not about Producer Responsibility Organisations.

But here you are.

And the good news is that the same instinct that made you care about quality is the same instinct that will get you through this.

Because the brands that already design for durability, that already think about end of life, that already care about what happens to their products after someone buys them? They are the ones who will pay the lowest fees under EPR.

The legislation is not punishing good brands. It is punishing lazy ones.

If you have been doing the work, you are closer to compliant than you think. If you have not, the window to start is still open.

Here is a practical thing you can do today. Look at your best selling product. Ask yourself three questions. Is it designed to last? Can it be repaired? Can it be recycled at end of life?

If you can answer yes to at least two of those, you are in a stronger position than most of your competitors.

If you want to know exactly where your brand stands on compliance readiness, the link in my bio takes five minutes and gives you a clear answer.

The compliance quiz in my bio takes ten minutes. It tells you which regulations actually apply to your brand.

Textile waste is not just an environmental issue. It is a financial one.I used to frame waste reduction as the right thi...
15/05/2026

Textile waste is not just an environmental issue. It is a financial one.

I used to frame waste reduction as the right thing to do. And it is.

But that framing does not get budget sign off from a finance director.

Here is what does.

EPR fees are coming for EU markets and they will be eco modulated. Products designed for longevity, repairability, and recyclability will attract lower fees. Products designed for disposability will attract higher ones.

That is not a moral argument. That is a line item on your P&L.

And if you think this is a large company problem, your buyers are likely large companies. They will need this data from their supply chain. Which is you.

Most fashion brands I speak to have not even mapped their EU market exposure yet. They do not know which countries have announced EPR schemes, whether they need to register with a Producer Responsibility Organisation, or what their potential fee liability looks like.

That one exercise, an afternoon's work, tells you more about your actual risk than any 200 page guide.

The carousel above breaks it down.

Comment WASTE and I will send you the five questions to ask before your next product review meeting.

12/05/2026

I will be honest. Two years ago I did not think textile waste regulations would move this fast.

I figured the EU would keep talking about it. Publishing reports. Holding consultations. The usual.

Then France proved the model worked. Then the Netherlands followed. Then Spain ran a pilot with some of the biggest names in fashion.

And in October 2025, the revised Waste Framework Directive entered into force across the entire EU.

Now every member state has to build an EPR scheme for textiles. Producers pay. Not consumers. Not governments. The people putting product on the market.

I was wrong about the speed. I do not want you to be wrong about the preparation.

The UK has not legislated yet. But WRAP and the UK Textile Pact published a ten point blueprint in early 2026 calling for mandatory textile EPR here too. The direction is clear even if the timeline is not.

If you sell into the EU and the UK, you are looking at a dual track compliance picture. That is not a reason to freeze. It is a reason to start mapping what applies to you now, while the window is still open.

Start with this: check your top three EU markets. Find out if they have announced EPR schemes. If they have, find out the registration deadline.

That is one afternoon's work. And it will save you months of stress later.

Comment WASTE and I will send you the three questions to ask your team this week.

Most fashion brands hear 'textile EPR' and file it straight under 'deal with it later.'Which is fine. Until it is not.Fr...
08/05/2026

Most fashion brands hear 'textile EPR' and file it straight under 'deal with it later.'
Which is fine. Until it is not.

France has had a scheme running since 2007. The Netherlands is live. Spain started its pilot in April 2025 with Inditex, H&M, and Decathlon.

And the revised EU Waste Framework Directive, which entered into force in October 2025, means every single member state needs an operational EPR scheme by April 2028. That is not a proposal sitting in a Brussels inbox.

It is law.

What it actually means for your business: you pay fees based on the volume of textiles you place on each market. The more sustainable your products, the lower your fees. The less sustainable, the higher. That is called eco-modulation, and it is worth understanding before someone else explains it to you in an invoice.

This carousel walks you through the three things to do right now, starting with the markets you are already selling into.

DM me 'WASTE' for the country by country checklist.

05/05/2026

From October 2025, every EU member state has to set up Extended Producer Responsibility schemes for textiles. That means if you sell clothes or footwear into Europe, you will pay for the collection, sorting, and recycling of what you put on the market.

Not in theory. In your operating costs.

Most fashion brands I speak to have not budgeted for this. They have not even checked which countries they are exposed to. France already has a scheme running. The Netherlands is live. Spain, Italy, and Germany are building theirs now.

The deadline for member states to transpose these rules into national law is June 2027. EPR schemes must be operational by April 2028. That sounds like ages. It is not. If you are selling into multiple EU markets, you need to understand your exposure across each one.

Here is what to do this week: pull a list of every EU country you sell into. Check whether that country has announced its EPR scheme yet. If it has, find out whether you need to register with a Producer Responsibility Organisation.

That one exercise will tell you more about your actual risk than any 200 page guide.

If you want help mapping your exposure, the link in my bio is a good place to start.

Comment CHECKLIST and I will send you the EU textile EPR country tracker.

01/05/2026

That moment when you realise B Corp certification is actually about changing how you run your business, not just getting a shiny logo for your website.

Been working with a few textile brands lately who thought sustainability meant hiring someone to write nice copy about their existing processes.

Turns out the real work happens when you start asking uncomfortable questions about your supply chain, your waste streams, and whether your business model actually makes sense long term.

The brands making genuine progress aren't necessarily the loudest ones online. They're quietly rebuilding their operations, having honest conversations with their teams, and discovering that sustainable practices often save money once you get past the initial setup.

B Corp isn't a marketing exercise. It's a business audit that happens to come with a nice badge at the end.

The certification process should feel a bit uncomfortable. If it doesn't, you're probably not digging deep enough.

I've got a free guide that breaks down the real costs and timeline for B Corp certification. DM me 'BCORP' and I'll send it over

You did not get into fashion to spend your evenings reconciling resale data in a spreadsheet that crashes every time you...
28/04/2026

You did not get into fashion to spend your evenings reconciling resale data in a spreadsheet that crashes every time you add a tab.

You launched a take back programme. Set up resale. Found a recycling partner. Maybe started repairs.

All good decisions. All creating genuine environmental value.

Then the data arrived. Returns going one way. Resale data going another. Recycling reports in a PDF that looks like it was formatted in 2004.

Nobody tells you this about circularity: the hard part is not launching the programmes. It is connecting the data so you can see what is actually working.

Impact Ledger brings returns, resale, repair and waste into one view. Built on DEFRA and WRAP frameworks so the numbers are credible when buyers ask.

Circularity should feel like progress, not admin.

Comment "SYSTEM" and I will walk you through it.

27/04/2026

Monday morning. You need a circularity update for the board.

You open the returns spreadsheet. Then the resale data export. Then you chase the recycling partner for a report they promised last Thursday.

Three hours later: the units do not match, the dates do not align, and one column is measured in "bags" which is genuinely unhelpful.

You have something that looks roughly right but you would not bet your job on it.

Spreadsheets are fine at the start. But circularity has too many moving parts for them to hold it together.

Impact Ledger replaces that chaos with one connected view. Returns, resale, repair, waste. Same units. Actually usable.

Follow for simpler systems.

I was sitting with a potential client who runs a brilliant take back programme. Resale through a partner. Recycling for ...
22/04/2026

I was sitting with a potential client who runs a brilliant take back programme. Resale through a partner. Recycling for damaged stock. Repair for best sellers.

On paper? Incredible.

Then I asked to see the numbers.

They opened four spreadsheets, two dashboards, a PDF from their recycling partner, and a WhatsApp thread with their warehouse manager.

That is not a circularity problem. That is a visibility problem.

The work was being done. The data existed. But it lived in so many places that nobody could see the full picture or make a proper decision about what to scale and what to stop.

That is why I built Impact Ledger. One view. Returns, resale, repair, waste. Built on DEFRA and WRAP frameworks.

Send this to someone on your team who is currently the human version of a data connector.

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