2010-Voluntary Product Environmental Profile (VPEP) Revived

Voluntary Product Environmental Profile (VPEP) Revived

Hardy Poole, National Textile Association


Introduction

In the 1990's the textile industry and its supply chain established the Voluntary Product
Environmental Profile (VPEP), an electronic system for providing information on the
environmental impact of textile products and processes. The system allowed the efficient exchange of data between textile companies and their suppliers, including information needed to make informed decisions regarding the safety of products and processes.
Prior to VPEP, information was shared inefficiently due to the variety of formats generated by suppliers or requested by their customers.
The VPEP system served the needs of the textile supply chain well, but, over time, it was
not upgraded to accommodate new computer/operating systems or additional data needs, and it became less valuable, and in some cases useless, to users.
It became clear that the system, once a valuable and efficient way to send technical data between trading partners, needed to be updated, especially with new demands for supplying restricted chemicals and sustainability information both nationally and internationally.