File 0202Updated 2026-07-26Owns recycled content verification

Recycled content verification that produces evidence, not another certificate.

A recycled content claim is only as strong as the documents behind it, and most brands keep those documents in a filing system rather than in a record. TexFile reads the documentation a garment already carries, reconciles it into a verified item record with provenance on every field, and serves that record to the auditor, the scheme and the passport export. It works on the stock already made, where no digital identifier exists to read.

§For brands and retailers

Why the claim rests on documents

Recycled and virgin polyester are the same molecule once the fibre is spun. Certification bodies state it in their own public guidance: there is no general method by which recycled content can be demonstrated in all circumstances. The claim therefore rests on history rather than on chemistry, and history in a textile supply chain means documents.

Mass balance accounting, supplier certificates, chain of custody audits and analytical testing each carry part of that history, and each stops somewhere short of the item a customer is holding. That is not a failure of the methods. It is what is left over when nobody records what a specific garment is, with the evidence still attached to it.

From a certificate to a record

A certificate is one party's assertion about a batch on one day. A verified item record is a reconciliation: several independent sources are read, compared against each other and resolved into fields, with a link from every field back to the document that produced it and a calibrated confidence expressing how well the sources agreed. The disagreements are kept as well as the agreements, because a claim that hides its conflicts is a summary.

What each object establishes when a regulator, a scheme or a buyer asks.
The question asked	A certificate establishes	A verified record establishes
What is this item made of	What a supplier asserted about a batch the item is believed to belong to.	The declared composition of this item, in controlled fibre names, with a confidence on each value.
Where did the value come from	A document reference, produced again on request.	The source read, when it was read, and which other sources agreed or disagreed with it.
Does it cover stock already in the warehouse	Only where a certificate was issued and can still be tied to those goods.	Yes, because the record is built from the documentation the goods themselves carry.
Can the claim leave as a passport	Not without a separate data exercise.	Yes, the record is assembled against the passport data model from the start.

What each object establishes when a regulator, a scheme or a buyer asks.

What the service does

From documentation to a sealed record

Reads what the garment carries: Composition, care, origin and brand labels, in any orientation, language or condition, including faded and partially obscured ones.
Normalizes into EU vocabularies: Raw label text becomes controlled terms: fibre names under Regulation (EU) 1007/2011, care symbols under the ISO 3758 vocabulary, country and brand fields resolved against the record store.
Reconciles and scores: Sources are compared against each other and resolved into fields, each value carrying a calibrated confidence. At a 0.9 threshold roughly a quarter of items clear the gate on their own; the rest reach assisted review with the evidence already gathered.
Validates before sealing: Every assembled record is checked against SHACL shapes before it is sealed. A record that does not conform does not ship.
Serves the record: A record store and API hold each item with its provenance and emit passport payloads, custody events or claim evidence on demand, at a sustained 23,800 items per hour under 16 concurrent requests.

None of this competes with the platforms a brand already runs. Those platforms move data a brand holds; TexFile originates data for items nothing has recorded yet, at the point of sorting, and hands it over through open standards. The layer sits below them.

Two instruments that moved this to the cost line

EmpCo, Directive (EU) 2024/825, applies from 27 September 2026 and bars environmental claims that are not substantiated, with penalties reaching 4% of annual turnover in the member states concerned. Substantiated means evidence a trader can produce, tied to the product being sold rather than to a batch somewhere upstream of it.

Directive (EU) 2025/1892, in force since 16 October 2025, brings textiles into extended producer responsibility with eco modulated fees. A producer pays less for products that perform better against defined criteria, so a claim you cannot evidence is a fee reduction you cannot take. Both instruments assume the underlying data exists. Neither one creates it.

Who it is built for

Three parties to one record

Brands and retailers
To substantiate recycled content on goods already made, and to be ready for the passport before the date arrives.
Verified item records for legacy garments, with provenance on every field and a passport projection from the same object.
Certification bodies and auditors
Evidence that can be inspected rather than a claim that can only be repeated.
A record naming the sources read, the values resolved, the confidence at the time of reading and the conflicts that remained.
Producer responsibility organisations
To justify eco modulated fees with figures that survive a scheme audit.
Per fraction evidence generated where the material is handled, in the reporting standards the schemes already use.

What the records conform to

Standards the output speaks

EU Digital Product Passport: Records are built to the passport data model from the first field, so producing a passport is an export rather than a project.
GS1 standards: Identifiers that resolve outside our systems, so any party in the chain can point at an item and reach the same record.
EPCIS: Custody events written in the standard vocabulary, ready for an auditor, a scheme or a recycler without translation.
PROV-O: Every field keeps a machine readable link to the document and the reading that produced it.
SHACL: Shapes are validated before a record is sealed, so a malformed claim never leaves the store.

Common questions

What is recycled content verification?

Recycled content verification is the work of establishing that a stated share of recycled material in a product is supported by evidence rather than by assertion. Because recycled and virgin polymers are chemically identical, that evidence is documentary: which sources stand behind each value, how well they agree, and what is done where they do not.

What does recycled content verification software do?

Recycled content verification software turns supporting documents into a structured record. TexFile reads the composition, care, origin and brand labels an item already carries, normalizes them into controlled EU vocabularies, reconciles the sources against each other, and writes a record in which every field names its source and carries a calibrated confidence.

Does this replace RCS or GRS certification?

Certification and verified records answer different questions, so this sits beside a standard rather than in place of one. A certificate records that a certified operator followed a documented procedure at audit time. A record states what one specific item is, from which documents, and how well those documents agree with each other.

Can items with no digital identifier be verified?

Items with no tag, no code and no passport still carry sewn in documentation, and that is enough to originate a record. TexFile builds the record from those labels at the point where the item is handled, which is what makes legacy stock and returned goods addressable rather than excluded from a claim.

Sources

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Verify with us

Bring us a claim you cannot yet evidence.

Tell us the product, the recycled content you assert and the documents you hold for it. We will show what a verified record for that item looks like, field by field.

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