AGEC: Why France’s Circular Economy Law Is Becoming a Retail Data Priority

If your brand sells into France—or plans to—there’s a growing chance you’ve heard AGEC mentioned in sustainability, sourcing, or compliance discussions. That’s because AGEC (“Antigaspillage pour une économie circulaire”) is designed to reduce waste, preserve natural resources, and strengthen consumer access to product and production information—creating real implications for how retail and apparel businesses manage product data.

For apparel, footwear and consumer goods brands, the takeaway is practical: regulations increasingly don’t care where your sustainability data lives. They care whether you can prove it, consistently and credibly, using product level information.

What is AGEC?

AGEC is France’s Anti‑Waste Law for a Circular Economy. Its intent is to preserve natural resources by cutting back on waste production, encourage more eco‑friendly means of production, and improve transparency for consumers.

AGEC also includes restrictions aimed at limiting the production of non‑recyclable waste. A key example is the ban on destroying unsold goods and the requirement to repurpose products—through approaches that include repair, reconditioning and recycling. The law’s circular economy focus extends to production scraps and leftover materials generated during manufacturing.

As of January 1, 2025, AGEC applies to companies with turnover greater than €10M selling at least 10,000 units into the French market.

Even if your headquarters are outside France, AGEC still matters if you sell into France, source for France, or operate product development processes shared across European markets. France‑specific requirements can quickly influence how teams define product attributes, label content, and documentation standards across broader assortments—especially when a business wants consistent workflows and data governance across regions.

Producers will be fined for illegal and improper disposal of waste. Instead of making companies simply pay a fine, there is also a five-year-plan that companies in breach must complete in addition that covers how they will avoid issues like this in the future.

For hard good retailers, there is ban on exporting electrical and electronic waste (WEEE) outside the EU and OECD, unless there is agreement from importing countries which will have to demonstrate their capacity to manage it "sustainably".

Retailers also need to bear in mind other factors. For example, the law aims for a huge reduction in single use plastic packaging; bring the end of automatic receipt printing, with traders having to offer a paper or electronic ticket; it directs traders to provide information on the availability of spare parts when purchasing a furniture product or an electronic product - the manufacturer or seller will then have 15 days to make available the necessary spare parts, from the circular economy;

AGEC also sanctions planned obsolescence and prohibits the restriction of repair or reconditioning. This includes the presence of an update that aims to slow down or degrade the use of the device.

What AGEC means for retail and apparel brands

AGEC labelling requirements vary by sector (Fashion, textile, footwear and apparel retailers are currently required to disclose the most data) but they broadly cover product information such as repairability, durability, recycled and reusable materials, any use of hazardous and rare materials, supply chain traceability, and plastic microfibre content. Affected companies must communicate required information via physical and digital product labels in French.

AGEC isn’t a “single team” issue—it cuts across the full product lifecycle. Product development teams are often responsible for the material definitions and specifications that form the starting point for reporting, while sourcing teams rely on suppliers to provide the inputs and evidence needed to substantiate claims. Compliance and sustainability teams then need that information to be traceable, well-documented, and auditable over time, and IT and data teams are typically brought in to connect systems and reduce the manual burden of pulling everything together. In practice, friction shows up when data is distributed across multiple tools, owned by different groups, or updated without a clear audit trail.

How brands can prepare

A pragmatic way to approach AGEC readiness is to treat it as a data operating model shift—not a one‑time reporting exercise:

• Start with structured product and material data.If sustainability and compliance data is tracked in isolation, gaps and inconsistencies become inevitable when disclosure requirements arrive.
• Plan for label level outputs.Where requirements push toward product labels (physical and digital), teams need inputs that can be reproduced without manual rework.
• Reduce disconnected-system risk.When PLM, ERP, sourcing tools, and reporting platforms aren’t integrated, it becomes difficult to maintain a single, defensible version of product truth.

The goal is simple: get ahead now by building the foundations—so you’re not scrambling later when stakeholders expect product level answers.

How FlexPLM supports AGEC readiness

The strongest path to AGEC readiness starts with getting your product “source of truth” in order. Compliance and sustainability are ultimately system architecture challenges—not single features. FlexPLM supports readiness by centralising and structuring product and material data so teams can manage disclosure-related attributes consistently, linking requirements and documentation to products and materials to support ongoing auditability, and enabling repeatable governance so changes are controlled and evidence is easy to find season after season. The result is long-term compliance readiness rather than one-off reporting fire drills.

AGEC is more than a French policy headline—it’s a signal that product transparency, traceability, and defensible data are becoming operational requirements for retail and apparel brands.

Brands that invest now in structured product and material data, clear ownership, and connected systems will be better positioned to respond calmly as requirements evolve. Those relying on disconnected spreadsheets and lastminute data hunts are more likely to feel the pressure when disclosure becomes business critical.

A proactive, data driven approach today builds resilience for tomorrow—regardless of which regulation becomes the next priority.

Our capabilities

As well as providing a centralised repository for all compliance and sustainability data, FlexPLM and our Flex Insights analytical reporting dashboards provide solutions that support nine functional areas:

• Eco-design and Sustainable Sourcing—Having sustainability metrics in FlexPLM at supplier, product and material/component level gives product developers the visibility they require to be able to select more sustainable materials, and for sourcing managers to select “more ethical” and sustainable suppliers. Our “Environment Impact” Flex Insights analytical dashboard can be used to give a top-down holistic overview of all sustainability metrics associated with products, materials and suppliers.
• Certifications and Compliance—You can use FlexPLM to create a “Bill of Certificates” at both product and material level to track what certificates will need to be collected if a product is approved for production. You can then use FlexPLM’s Document library to store the corresponding certificates and use the expiry date field to automatically alert users, through workflow, as to when a certificate needs renewal. Our “Compliance Tracking” Flex Insights analytical dashboard is ideal for managing this process.
• Supplier ESG—Use FlexPLM to track supplier and factory audits. Having expiry dates associated with these processes will streamline the renewal process as workflow will trigger automatic renewal alerts. If you use third party supplier audit solutions, Flex Connect can be used to build integrations to those platforms so that all Supplier ESG metrics can be centralised within FlexPLM. Our “Environment Impact” Flex Insights analytical dashboard can be used to give a top-down holistic overview of all sustainability and ESG metrics associated with your supply chain.
• Packaging Management—Utilise FlexPLM for managing packaging. Sustainability legislation requirements mean that understanding the environmental impact of manufacturing packaging is just as important as defining the materials and components to be used in the manufacture of a product. FlexPLM treats packaging as if it were any other component or material to be selected for inclusion within a product BOM. Because of this approach, packaging records can store compliance certifications and sustainability metrics such as recycled content. The EU Regulation on Deforestation-Free Products (EUDR) has put fashion companies that use leather, rubber and wood, ‘on notice’ to ensure their supply chains are free from illegal deforestation. Brands can use FlexPLM to ensure that, for example, cardboard packaging complies with these sorts of regulations by using the solution to increase visibility to the origin of packaging materials.
• Bills of Processes—Within FlexPLM, build product level “Bill of Processes” to list out all the processes used in the manufacture of a product. The ability to derive, for example, accurate GHG emissions and wastewater estimate figures for these manufacturing processes incurred during the development process will help drive and support range building for more circular products with higher recyclability and lower environment footprint.
• Creating Fibre BOMs—Use FlexPLM to store detailed fibre information, and recycled content. You can then, for example, use roll-up reports to quantify and reserve griege production; define complex compositions for materials; and use accurate recycled and organic content and material composition details to better support eco-design decisions. Portions of the AGEC legislation necessitates the collection of data at the fibre level, including:
  • The incorporation of recycled material - total recycled content within a product based on all the non-packaging materials used, in other words the recycled material measured as a percentage of the total mass of the product. Note that ‘sustainably sourced’ and ‘recycled’ are not the same.
  • The country of realisation of the main operations of weaving, dyeing-printing, and clothing.
  • The countries of origin of the raw materials.
  • FlexPLM can be used to centralise all the data required to report against the above pillars.
• Vendor input—Suppliers are the gatekeepers of a vast amount of material- and product-related sustainability data. Giving suppliers deeper access into FlexPLM through our “Vendor Portal” allows them to directly update information in the system, reducing the workload on internal sustainability and sourcing teams. For example, updating product BOMs to show certification requirements and accurate compositions.
• Sustainability KPI reporting—Most Retailers have publicly published ESG and sustainability targets and KPIs. If you integrate data from downstream systems such as ERP and traceability solutions (using Flex Connect to build the required integrations), you can then use our “Sustainability and Compliance” Flex Insights analytical dashboard to report on progress towards these targets.
• Traceability—As mentioned above, PLM can be used to show the intent of the supply chain and the components/compositions used. Since this information can only be confirmed after bulk production, downstream systems such as ERP and traceability platforms are the primary source for traceability data. After production and product traces are complete, critical attributes and KPIs can be sent back to FlexPLM for both historical reporting purposes and for enriching carry-over styles to help with future range building analytics.