No, and that’s an important distinction. Only around 23,000 substances were registered under REACH as of 2025, while several hundred thousand chemical compounds are in commercial use globally. A substance not appearing on the Candidate List can mean it’s been evaluated and judged safe — but it can just as easily mean it simply hasn’t been reviewed yet. The absence of a warning flag is not the same thing as a certificate of safety.
Yes. A company importing a product into the EU takes on the same obligations an EU manufacturer would have — they may need to appoint what’s called an “Only Representative” for registration purposes. That’s the whole point of the system: country of origin doesn’t determine whether the rules apply, only who bears responsibility for following them.
Yes, but not ECHA directly. Enforcement lies with each member state’s own authority — in Sweden, the Swedish Chemicals Agency (Kemikalieinspektionen); in Germany, among others, the Federal Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (BAuA) together with the state (Länder) authorities. ECHA coordinates and maintains registers, but it’s national inspections, market surveillance, and in some cases customs at the point of import that actually catch non-compliance in practice.
Being on the Candidate List (SVHC) means a substance has been identified as of very high concern and that companies must inform customers if it’s present in an article above 0.1% by weight — but it isn’t itself banned. Only when a substance is moved to the narrower Authorisation List (Annex XIV) does its use become subject to authorisation. So these are two different levels of severity, not the same thing — and a substance can remain on the Candidate List for years before (or without) ever being moved further.
Almost, but not exactly. When a substance is added to REACH Annex XIV (the Authorisation List), it means the substance can no longer be manufactured, sold or used within the EU after a set date — unless a company applies for and is granted a specific exemption for a specific use. In practice it functions as a ban with a narrow opening for cases where no safer alternative exists. DEHP, DBP, BBP and DIBP are examples of substances handled this way since 2015.
Generally yes, if they contain phthalates. Phthalates aren’t chemically bound to the plastic but slowly migrate out of the material over its entire lifetime — the older the garment, the more has already leached out, and remaining levels continue migrating into air, dust and onto skin on contact. An older PVC garment (or a second-hand find) has therefore, statistically, already released more phthalates than a new one. This doesn’t apply to Farmerrain’s own materials, since they’re phthalate-free regardless of age — but it’s worth knowing for PVC products in general.
PVC as a material can technically be re-melted several times without degrading its properties, and material recycling of PVC is increasing in Europe. But a rain garment is rarely a single material — zippers, seam tape, buttons and lining make textile recycling more complicated in practice than for pure PVC plastic. We’re honest that we don’t yet have a full-scale recycling solution for finished garments. Our sustainability strategy instead relies primarily on longevity: a garment that lasts for decades burdens the environment less than several short-lived garments, regardless of recyclability.
Not necessarily. Halogens are a group of elements (including chlorine, fluorine and bromine) that occur naturally in, for example, sea salt, and that in certain plastics — such as PVC — are tightly chemically bound within the polymer chain itself. In that form, they’re in practice as harmless as the salt in seawater. What’s actually problematic are certain free-standing halogen compounds, such as brominated flame retardants. Requiring “halogen-free” is a blunt instrument — it excludes both harmful and harmless halogen uses in one sweep. It’s more precise to ask about the absence of specific substances, which is what we do throughout the rest of this FAQ.
Yes, this should be avoided — but not because PVC is uniquely dangerous. Uncontrolled combustion of chlorine-containing material (PVC, but also wood and food waste) can form dioxins, a group of toxic and persistent substances. It’s the uncontrolled combustion itself that’s the problem: in industrial PVC manufacturing, dioxin forms only in trace amounts and is captured by catalysts, and controlled waste incineration plants have flue gas cleaning that captures most of it. The rule is simple: take worn-out rainwear to textile recycling or municipal waste collection — never burn it yourself, regardless of material.
Our Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) is third-party verified to ISO 14025 by Sweco Environment, with data from Miljögiraff AB. It describes material composition, climate impact and life cycle in detail — get in touch if you’d like it sent to you.
No. An eco-label certifies that a product meets certain requirements. An EPD sets no threshold and does not say whether a product is good or bad – it reports verified facts about the product’s environmental impact, so that you can assess it yourself and compare it with products measured in the same way.
Because that is when the analysis was carried out. Since then we have switched to the Pevalen™ Pro 100 plasticizer (2024), so 5.82 kg describes the garment with the previous plasticizer. A new measurement is under way, and the EPD is valid until January 2027. Until the new one is ready, we report the old figure with that caveat.
An EPD always applies to a specific product. We chose the sailing jacket in Raintex+, our heaviest fabric, as the starting point. Our other garments have no measurements of their own that have been verified, so we do not publish separate figures for them.
Because they measure different things with different system boundaries. 5.82 kg of carbon dioxide equivalent is our figure for the whole jacket, from cradle to grave. The roughly 80 percent is Perstorp’s figure for the plasticizer, compared with a fossil equivalent, from cradle to gate – that is, only up to the point it leaves Perstorp’s factory. According to our own calculation, the plasticizer accounts for about 40 percent of the garment’s carbon footprint, so the reduction for the whole garment is smaller than 80 percent – the new measurement will show by how much.
They are system boundaries – they state what is included in a carbon footprint. Cradle to gate means the calculation covers only the process from raw material extraction and manufacturing until the product leaves the factory, the gate. Cradle to grave covers the whole life, including use and what happens when the product is worn out. Our EPD is calculated from cradle to grave. The more stages included, the more the figure says about the product’s real impact.
A life cycle assessment (LCA) is the calculation itself of a product’s environmental impact across its whole life. An EPD is the standardised way of reporting the result: according to ISO 14025, following established product category rules and reviewed by an independent third party. Every EPD is based on an LCA, but far from every LCA becomes a verified EPD.
Because it is unusual and hard to produce. An Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) under ISO 14025 requires an independently reviewed life cycle assessment following established product category rules, an external accredited verifier (Sweco Environment in our case) and a significant cost – and it must be renewed regularly, which is why a new measurement is already under way ahead of January 2027. We have not found any other rainwear brand we follow that has published an equivalent, third-party-verified EPD for one of its own garments. That is also why we can state a specific figure such as 5.82 kg CO2e per jacket outright – it is verified, not estimated. Since 27 September 2026, EU Directive 2024/825 also requires specific environmental claims to be backed by exactly this kind of independent evidence.
We switch. That’s what we did when we moved from a fossil-based plasticizer to Pevalen™ Pro 100. If something we use today is credibly questioned tomorrow, we update the material and say so openly — just as we’re already open about the fact that our Deadstock material may contain phthalates, because it was manufactured before current legislation existed.
Children often put collars and sleeves in their mouths, which is a common exposure route for substances that aren’t chemically bound to the material (such as phthalates and chlorinated paraffins, which migrate out of the plastic over time). Since Pevalen™ Pro 100 belongs to a different chemical family than both of those groups, this reduces that specific risk — but as with all plastic products, it’s still good practice not to let children chew on clothing for extended periods.
No. Re-impregnation (DWR) is only needed for garments where waterproofness relies on a surface treatment that wears off. Our waterproofness sits in the vinyl material itself — like an umbrella. There’s no layer to renew.
Yes. Under the EU’s REACH Regulation, a company must respond within 45 days if a product contains substances on the SVHC list (such as DEHP or SCCP), if you ask.
EU legislation is binding and stricter than in many other markets, but it doesn’t cover everything. A concrete example: the four most common ortho-phthalates (DEHP, DBP, BBP, DIBP) have required specific regulatory authorisation within the EU since 21 February 2015 — in practice banned in most applications for over ten years. Outside the EU, no equivalent restriction applies: the same substances are still manufactured and used at scale in, among other places, China, India, the Middle East and Latin America. Goods imported from outside the EU are often resold within the EU without full testing for every substance group. A CE mark or an EU address on the garment doesn’t automatically guarantee every component has been tested.
Because they were the best-performing technical option available when they were introduced — PFAS gave unmatched water repellency, phthalates and chlorinated paraffins made rigid PVC wearable. It wasn’t carelessness. The risks only became clear decades later, as research into accumulation in the body and environment developed.
No. Pure PVC (polyvinyl chloride) is a stable plastic. It’s the additives — plasticizers, flame retardants, stabilisers — that determine whether a PVC material is problematic, not the polymer itself.
No — it only means phthalates specifically weren’t used. A garment can be phthalate-free and still contain chlorinated paraffins, or vice versa. That’s why we spell out each substance group separately instead of using umbrella terms like “chemical-free” or “green.”
They solve different problems in different materials. PFAS surface-treats fabric to make it water-repellent. Phthalates and chlorinated paraffins are plasticizers built into PVC to make it flexible. They share one thing: all three are hard to break down and suspected endocrine disruptors under long-term exposure, which is why they’re all under tightening EU regulation.