bluesign Brand Guidelines: St. Gallen’s Textile Chemistry Mark, Now bluepass

A Swiss idea about where the problem starts.

bluesign is a Swiss company rather than a charity or a public body. FashionUnited reported in October 2015 that it was founded in November 2000 in St. Gallen, and that the aim of its chief executive, Peter Waeber, was not a new eco-label but a systematic change to textile production as a whole. The company’s own timeline gives 2000 and Switzerland. German Wikipedia says it was founded by chemical and textile experts. A company statement carried by FashionUnited in January 2021 traces the idea to a 1997 Swiss project to make a textile product with the lowest possible environmental burden, from which an independent company was then formed.

The idea is called input stream management. Instead of testing a finished garment, the system looks at what goes into production. Waeber put it bluntly in that 2015 interview: you have to manage the input, the chemistry entering the process, because that is where everything starts. He also said, in our translation, that the company did not believe chemical firms’ data, “by definition.” He argued that the work only holds up when processes are understood and checked on site.

The company’s timeline sets out the early steps. It says it produced a manufacturing restricted substances list and a positive list of approved chemical inputs in 2001–2002, a list it calls the world’s first, launched the bluesign Guide, a sourcing directory, in 2003, and signed its first chemical partner in 2005. Between 2006 and 2008, it says, the first consumer product with a bluesign label reached shops through VAUDE, and Patagonia, MEC and The North Face adopted the system in 2007–2008. Later names on the same timeline include Lululemon in 2012 and Eileen Fisher in 2017.

Ownership moved in the same period. bluesign says SGS, the testing, inspection and certification group, became a strategic investor in the 2006–2008 phase. Sporting Goods Intelligence described bluesign as part of the SGS Group in June 2021, when it reported that Daniel Rüfenacht had been appointed chief executive from 1 June, replacing Jill Dumain, who moved to a sustainability role at SGS. The company’s July 2025 anniversary statement names Rüfenacht as chief executive and says bluesign is part of SGS. The trade title TextileTechnology gave the company’s name and base in 2022 as bluesign technologies ag, St. Gallen.

Criteria, lists and critics.

The core of the system is a set of published criteria. bluesign says they cover chemical safety, resource efficiency, pollution control, occupational health and safety, and legal and social compliance, and that they are written by its bluesign Academy, which it says is independent of its assessment teams. It names six areas of assessment: product stewardship, resource productivity, environmental protection, occupational health and safety, emergency preparedness and social responsibility. Assessors visit production sites.

The lists behind the criteria are technical documents. TextileTechnology explained them in July 2022: the System Black Limits set thresholds for substances in finished chemical products such as dyes and auxiliaries, the System Substances List sets limits in articles, and the Restricted Substances List is an extract of that list with recommended test methods. In the same report it said articles finished with PFAS chemistry would be phased out of the bluesign Guide from July 2024, with narrow exceptions.

TEXtalks reported in August 2026 that revised lists took effect on 1 July 2026, splitting PFAS into polymers, dyes and other PFAS, with partners generally given until 1 July 2028 to comply. It said PFAS have been restricted in bluesign’s approved materials and removed from its databases since January 2026, subject to limited exceptions.

The scheme has been assessed from outside. FashionUnited reported in November 2014 that a Greenpeace guide to textile labels rated bluesign as recommended with limits, noting a broad list of banned substances but also gaps and limits it thought too high. The fifth edition of the guide, dated April 2018, said bluesign regulated hundreds of chemicals, including all the groups in Greenpeace’s Detox campaign, but had no limit values or wastewater tests to check the effect on the environment, and that its lists could be stricter, particularly for individual PFCs in functional clothing. Utopia placed it in that guide’s middle group, with two stars out of three. Those findings predate the 2026 changes described above. German Wikipedia adds that the rating portal Siegelklarheit found high requirements on credibility and the environment but insufficient criteria on social issues.

The scale is the company’s own figure: more than 900 system partners, up from over 500 in 2017, with 28,000 chemical products and more than 70,000 textile materials listed in 2025. Its July 2025 statement gives 70,000 and its timeline 74,000.

How these schemes present themselves.

A certification mark does a different job from a company logo. It does not sell one maker’s goods; it sits on other companies’ packs, often in a corner, and asks shoppers to trust a set of rules they will rarely read. That makes these schemes unusual design subjects. The visible part is tiny, while the system behind it fills manuals, licence contracts and audit reports.

The manuals are often public, and they are unusually exact. The FAIRTRADE Mark Guidelines set a clear space, a size guide from posters down to labels and hang tags, and a minimum printed width. The Rainforest Alliance’s seal guidelines set a minimum size so that a QR code still scans, and forbid printing the seal across a fold. Fairtrade gives legibility as its reason and the Rainforest Alliance gives scanning, and in both cases the same mark has to work on a large pack, a label or a hang tag, printed by many different companies.

Around the mark sit smaller pieces of evidence. Schemes may ask for a claim beside the mark, a licence or producer number on the pack, or a web address that leads back to the standard. Fairtrade’s guidelines, for example, call for a producer FLO ID or a national reference code in some cases. Behind them sit audits and certificates: the Rainforest Alliance says only those who meet a standard after an audit may display its seal.

This group of guides looks at how these schemes present themselves: who founded them, who owns the mark, what each scheme says it certifies, and what its logo rules ask of the brands that use it. Where critics have challenged a scheme, the guide says so, and what the mark means is given in the scheme’s own terms.

One mark, a text claim and a QR code.

The most important recent change is to the name on the label. From April 2026, the company says, the old bluesign APPROVED and bluesign PRODUCT designations are being replaced by a single bluepass mark system. It has three forms. bluepass Consumer Product replaces bluesign PRODUCT on finished goods. bluepass Article replaces bluesign APPROVED on fabrics, accessories and trims. bluepass Chemical Product replaces bluesign APPROVED on chemical products. Existing labels remain valid where they are already in use, and partners are moving through 2026.

The company says the criteria and assessment process are unchanged, and that what is new is the naming, a standardised label format and a QR code. Every bluepass label, it says, carries the mark, a text claim and a code leading to a verification page controlled by bluesign. It also draws a careful line about what is being certified: production processes, it says, “not facilities as entities or finished products themselves.” German Wikipedia’s account of the older system says a product needed at least 90 per cent of its processing in certified factories to carry the bluesign product seal.

The timing comes from regulation. bluesign links the change to the EU’s Empowering Consumers directive, which it said would become enforceable on 27 September 2026, requiring sustainability labels to be set by a public authority or based on a certification scheme meeting seven requirements. In a September 2026 note it says it sets the criteria and assesses companies, while consumer-facing bluepass products are certified by SGS Fimko Oy, which it describes as an independent accredited body and a separate legal entity. On 16 September 2026 it opened revised criteria and a new scheme for public consultation until 30 October 2026.

Spelling is part of the identity. The company writes bluesign in lower case, as it does bluepass, and uses capitals for the old APPROVED and PRODUCT labels.

For a design guide, bluesign shows a mark being rebuilt around evidence, with the claim, the text and the code treated as one unit on a small label. Compare OEKO-TEX, another textile label, and Patagonia, one of the outdoor brands the company names as an early adopter. For this guide we use vat blue, rinse blue and greige with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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