Intertek provides durability testing with High performance mark, a smarter and more trustworthy way to market your high-performance products.
What is Durability and why is it becoming important?
Durability can be defined as physical and emotional durability. While physical durability is the ability of a physical product to remain functional and resist damage and wear without requiring excessive maintenance or repair, when faced with the challenges of normal operation over its design lifetime (e.g., pilling). Emotional durability considers the user's relevance and desirability (e.g., fit and taste).
Durability is becoming increasingly important in today’s day and age considering consumers and brands are moving to more circular and sustainable products. Durability in Softlines assures clothes have a longer usable life and need to be replaced less frequently, reduction in volume discarded, reduced consumption of resources in manufacturing and overall, a better output considering circular economy.
Durability is being included in the Regulations and Initiatives especially in the EU (European Union) region such as:
- Product Environmental Footprint Category Rules (PEFCR)
- Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR)
- Product Environmental Footprint (PEF)
- The Anti-waste and Circular Economy Law in France
- Eco-modulations in France
- The European Green Deal etc.
All these regulations and initiatives help to increase public awareness of the importance of durability. Durability is also one of the criteria for Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and known as “Duration of Service” under the PEF with three levels of products, basic, moderate, and aspirational.
Validating High-Performance Features with the High-Performance Mark
Intertek's High-Performance Mark program substantiates and verifies the high-performance features of your textile and apparel products, with distinct performance features of durability. This empowers you to confidently display a mark of trust to end-customers, demonstrating that these features meet Intertek's High-Performance Mark standards.
Obtaining the High Performance Mark - Durable means attaining the aspirational level per EU’s Product Environmental Footprint Category Rules (PEFCR) Version 3.1 Annex V.
We verify durability across a wide range of categories including:
Apparel
T-shirts, shirts, sweaters, jackets, coats, pants, jeans, dresses, skirts, jumpsuits, leggings, socks, underwear, swimwear.
Strengthening Your Durable Claims
Stand out in sustainable fashion with the Intertek High-Performance Mark – Durable. Strengthen your durability claims and gain consumer trust with verification from the world- leading quality assurance organization.