The questions we are actually asked.
Answered short, and linked to the page that carries the long version. If the answer you need is not here, it is a fair question to put to us on a call, and the ones we cannot yet answer honestly are left out rather than filled in.
What Green Story is
Who we are, who we work with, and who is answerable for the method.
What is Green Story?
Green Story is a sustainability data company for the global fashion industry. It turns scattered product and supply-chain data into life-cycle assessments, digital product passports, ecoscores and compliance-ready reporting, combining an AI-first platform with named experts led by a published chief scientist.
The company was founded in 2015 and works with more than 200 companies across 35+ countries, from billion-dollar household names to companies on the cutting edge of sustainable innovation.
Is Green Story software or a consultancy?
Both, and deliberately. Green Story runs an AI platform that collects, traces and computes the data, and a team of PhD-level specialists who visit facilities, review the models and sign the results. The platform is what makes it fast; the people are what make it defensible.
A named analyst is embedded in your team, and the specialists reading your bill of materials have read a few thousand others. Neither half is sold without the other.
When was Green Story founded, and where is it based?
Green Story was founded in 2015 and is headquartered in Utrecht, in the Netherlands. It has three further offices: Toronto for North America, Nagpur for data and engineering, and Hong Kong, where the published life-cycle method is developed.
Who uses Green Story?
More than 200 companies across 35+ countries: brands, retailers, mills and manufacturers across the fashion value chain. Green Story is built for apparel, footwear and home textile brands, and for the suppliers and programme partners around them.
Brands see the journey and measure footprints. Suppliers get their own login and answer every buyer once, controlling what each one sees. Programme partners run programmes across whole supplier communities and report to the funders behind them.
Is Green Story only for large enterprises?
No. Green Story works at every level of the fashion value chain (billion-dollar household names, startups, and small suppliers), with a console built for each: brands measure and publish, suppliers answer every buyer once, and programme partners run whole supplier communities.
A decade of building for all three is what makes that possible. What a two-person sustainability team needs is not what a mill needs, so there is a solution set shaped for each participant rather than one product with features switched off.
Who leads the science behind Green Story's numbers?
Prof. Dr. Kannan Muthu is Green Story's Chief Sustainability Officer. He has 253 peer-reviewed publications on textile sustainability, cited 4,550 times, with an h-index of 36, published with Springer, Woodhead Publishing, CRC Press and Elsevier.
The modelling approach behind Green Story's assessments is peer-reviewed rather than proprietary and unexplained, which is what lets an auditor argue with the method instead of taking it on trust.
What has Green Story actually done before?
Green Story has delivered 1,000+ LCAs across 40+ unique fibres and 35+ manufacturing countries, into a proprietary database of 6,000+ data points. That includes the world's first LCA on 3D weaving, the world's first on regenerative organic cotton farming in West Africa, and the world's first commercial rental LCA.
Also the EU's first LCA across multiple circular business models, India's first on textile-to-textile recycling, and the quantitative basis for investment in circular textiles ecosystems in the UK, the USA and the MENA region.
Is Green Story available outside fashion and textiles?
Green Story works across fashion and textiles and the categories around them: apparel, footwear, accessories such as bags and suitcases, bedding and home textiles. The expertise is textile-specific by design rather than general-purpose, which is what lets an assessment go past assumptions and into a real facility.
Depth in one industry is what lets a factor be matched to the process, the technology and the region the work actually ran in.
Where the numbers come from
The short answers. The data pages carry the long ones, in the form an auditor asks them.
Where do Green Story's emission factors come from?
From a ranked hierarchy of four source tiers, and the rank travels with the result. Green Story uses your own primary data first, then its own datasets built from field collection, then established third-party life-cycle databases for background processes, then peer-reviewed literature where nothing else exists yet.
An analyst may only move down a tier when the tier above has been tried and cannot be obtained for that specific input: per input, not per product. A single footprint routinely draws on all four, which is why the split is stated rather than summarised.
How does Green Story verify supplier data?
Five gates. The platform objects first on units, ranges, duplicates and impossible yields. An analyst then opens the document behind the value. Where the input matters or the evidence is thin, Green Story verifies at the facility, on site across 35+ manufacturing countries.
An LCA specialist then reviews boundary, allocation and factor choice, which is where sound inputs and a wrong model usually meet. Then it is signed, or refused.
How much of a footprint is actually measured rather than estimated?
The measured share varies by chain and by season, and Green Story states the split on the face of every result rather than in an appendix. No footprint is entirely measured. A model claiming 100% primary data is describing a supply chain nobody has.
The figure worth watching is not whether estimation was used, because it always is. It is whether the split is stated, and whether it falls season on season.
Can we use our own emission factors?
Yes. Where you hold a verified emission factor of your own, Green Story uses it in place of its own and labels it as yours, so an auditor reviewing the result can see whose number is whose rather than having to ask.
Is Green Story an accredited third-party verification body?
For the Higg Facility Environmental Module, Green Story is a Cascale-approved verifier body. For everything else, no, and Green Story will not offer its own review as a substitute where a scheme or a customer requires independent verification.
What it does instead is make that audit short: the evidence, the factors, the versions and the reviewers are already assembled when the assessor arrives.
Is our supply chain data kept confidential?
Yes. Green Story is ISO 27001 certified, and supplier relationships are treated as the commercially sensitive information they are. Suppliers control what each buyer is allowed to see, and members of a partner programme choose what the programme may see.
Unshared data is labelled honestly rather than shown as zero. Worker surveys are anonymous and reported only in group form.
Where is our data hosted, and is it stored in the EU?
In the EU. Green Story holds its data on servers in Germany and Finland, and the company is ISO 27001 certified. Those are two separate assurances (where the data physically sits, and how it is governed once it is there), and a procurement review usually asks for both.
Confidentiality is a separate question again, and is handled as a permission on the record rather than as a property of where that record is stored.
What happens to our published figures when a method or factor changes?
Green Story identifies exactly which products and reports are affected and re-runs those, rather than rebuilding everything. Results carry the method and dataset version they were computed under, so two figures are never silently incomparable.
The change is then restated where the figure was published, with the previous version retained. A correction nobody can see is indistinguishable from an error nobody caught.
What the outputs are accepted by
The frameworks, the dates, and the line between preparing a filing and making one.
Which standards does Green Story's data conform to?
Green Story's life-cycle work follows ISO 14040/44, ISO 14067 and the EU PEF method. Corporate inventories follow the GHG Protocol and ISO 14064. Passports are built to GS1 identification standards and the CIRPASS-2 programme, and the French environmental cost display is computed on its own published method.
The frame changes the presentation, never the underlying figure, which is why a number quoted into one framework is the number quoted into the others.
Does Green Story file compliance reports for us?
No. Every framework has its own filing, its own assessor and its own deadline, and Green Story does not file on your behalf. What collecting the data once buys is that the answers agree and the evidence is already assembled when somebody asks.
Five obligations do not become one task. Whether you are compliant remains an assessor's call, and Green Story will not pre-empt it.
Does Green Story support the EU Digital Product Passport?
Yes. Green Story generates Digital Product Passports from the traced chain and the product footprint behind each item, conforming to GS1 identification and to the CIRPASS-2 programme for interoperability. For textiles, the European Commission plans to adopt the ESPR delegated act in Q4 2027, and companies then have at least 18 months before the requirements apply.
What a shopper scans and what a regulator asks for are the same record, kept current by the same dataset. Where a link is unconfirmed or a document is missing, the passport says so rather than filling the space with a plausible number.
What is the French Ecoscore, and does Green Story support it?
France's environmental cost display, the Coût Environnemental, has made environmental scoring a condition of selling into the country since October 2026. Green Story computes the score on your own product data, publishes it into the Ecobalyse system by API, and puts the same figure on your product pages and passports.
The requirement took effect on 1 October 2026. Italy's own Ecoscore is set to follow.
How does Green Story keep track of fashion regulations?
Green Story maintains the Global Fashion Regulations Tracker, which follows 130+ fashion regulations across nine categories and is refreshed every week. More than a third of them are already enforceable today. Each instrument carries its market, its status and what it actually asks for.
Open the Global Fashion Regulations Tracker (opens in a new tab)
What fashion sustainability regulations are coming, and when?
Four dates matter most, and Green Story tracks them. In 2026, French Ecoscore and EGAC make environmental scoring a condition of selling into France. In Q4 2027, the European Commission plans to adopt the ESPR delegated act for textiles, and companies then have at least 18 months before Digital Product Passport requirements apply. In 2028, enforcement lands as penalties and lost shelf space. From 2030, product-level carbon moves onto the balance sheet.
What it actually does
One traced dataset, and the things that are cut from it.
What does the Green Story platform do?
Green Story covers traceability, product LCA, ecoscore, carbon accounting, SBTi targets, eco-contributions, compliance, digital product passports and reporting. All of them read from one traced dataset, which is why a figure quoted in one is the figure quoted in the others.
The facts are collected once, against the purchase order that actually made the garment, and each framework is a presentation of them rather than a separate collection exercise.
Which systems does Green Story integrate with?
Green Story connects to the systems in a brand's stack through its API, and ships native integrations into select platforms including Retraced and Shopify. Where no integration is wanted, products can arrive as a CSV, over the API, or as a manual export instead.
Nothing has to be cleaned up first. Whatever shape the product data is in when it arrives, Green Story's team does the setup while your team sets the priorities.
What is a Digital Product Passport?
A Digital Product Passport is a digital record attached to a physical product, usually reached by a QR code, carrying what the product is made of, who made each part of it and what that cost the environment. For textiles, the European Commission plans to adopt the ESPR delegated act in Q4 2027, and companies then have at least 18 months before the requirements apply. Green Story builds each one from the verified record behind the product rather than as a separate document.
Each one is designed in your own brand and inherits the traced chain and footprint rather than being re-entered, so it cannot drift from the data it claims to show. You choose what a shopper sees and what stays available to regulators and buyers. Commercial sensitivity and disclosure are not the same setting.
Do consumers actually engage with product sustainability information?
On Green Story's own numbers, yes: the carbon-offset impact certificates it sends to consumers see a 63% open rate, across more than 30 million emails served globally. Impact also renders on the product page itself and in the passport a shopper scans, rather than on a microsite nobody visits.
Kilograms of CO₂e are translated into everyday equivalences a customer can hold, without overstating what they mean, and the supply-chain journey shown to a shopper is drawn from the confirmed chain rather than from an illustration.
Does Green Story calculate Scope 3 emissions?
Yes. Green Story computes Scope 1, 2 and 3, and builds purchased goods and services up from real product footprints and traced orders rather than from a factor applied to spend. Because the company footprint and the product footprints come from the same primary data, the two reconcile.
Scope 3 is never finished: new suppliers arrive, categories get re-scoped, and last year's number moves when better data replaces an estimate. Green Story restates rather than quietly overwrites: every figure carries the basis it was computed on.
How far back can Green Story trace a product?
To the farm, forest or mine that started it. A Green Story trace begins from a purchase order and moves outward: each trading partner confirms their own link and names the next one, so the chain is built from what suppliers attest to rather than what a brand assumes on their behalf.
A chain is rarely complete on the first pass. Pending links are shown as pending, not as zero, and unconfirmed links are marked unconfirmed, because the number that matters is how much of the chain a supplier has put their name to.
Do our suppliers have to use Green Story too?
Suppliers get their own Green Story login and their own record. They answer one questionnaire and reuse it for every buyer who asks, and they decide what each buyer sees, which is why they answer it properly.
Partners who will never log in are recorded on their behalf by a Green Story analyst, and that fact is stamped on the record rather than hidden inside it.
What is a product LCA?
A product life-cycle assessment measures the environmental impact of one product from cradle to grave. Green Story models them from the orders you actually placed and the suppliers who actually made the garment, not from an industry average with your logo on it.
Every result states how much of it was measured and how much was estimated, and the whole assessment follows ISO 14040/44 and ISO 14067 on the EU PEF method.
Will our reports agree with each other?
Yes, because they are cuts of one dataset rather than separate exercises. Green Story reports by product line, supplier, material, facility and scope from the same verified figures, aligned to the GHG Protocol, ISO and PEF, and every figure opens back to the document behind it.
Two reports quoting different numbers for one season is the failure auditors find fastest. It cannot happen where purchased goods and services is built up from the product library rather than estimated alongside it.
Can Green Story help us set and track SBTi targets?
Yes. Green Story sets absolute or intensity-based reduction targets per scope against a baseline built from primary data rather than a spend estimate, then tracks them quarterly against the pathway, with a Chief Sustainability Officer on the account and interventions ranked by what actually moves the curve.
How often are reduction targets reviewed?
Quarterly. Green Story tracks progress against the pathway each quarter rather than at the end of a reporting year, so a target that is drifting is visible while there is still time to act on it, and the interventions are ranked by their effect on the curve.
Does Green Story sell carbon offsets?
Green Story offers eco-contributions from a preset, third-party verified portfolio (Verra, Gold Standard, RECs and iRECs, plus plastic and biodiversity credits), sized from each product's own LCA. The portfolio is curated so nobody on your team is sifting hundreds of options and carrying the risk of the one they pick.
Retirement is tracked on a monthly cadence rather than claimed at the point of purchase, and each transaction carries an ID, so one contribution can be checked rather than taken on trust.
Can we check that a carbon contribution was actually retired?
Yes. Green Story tracks retirements and publishes them in a public carbon register, where every contribution is traceable to the project it funded, with retirements verified by Gold Standard, the Verified Carbon Standard and the CDM.
Does carbon offsetting count towards our reduction target?
No. Green Story reports reduced emissions and contributed emissions as two separate figures, always, and will not let a report imply otherwise. A reduction target is tracked against the footprint itself; contributions sit outside it and do not move the curve.
If your footprint is not falling, no portfolio fixes that, and anyone telling you otherwise is selling you the risk rather than removing it. Reduce first, then contribute for what is genuinely left.
Can Green Story tell us whether we are compliant?
No, and it will not claim to: readiness is a judgement, not a certificate, and nobody can call you compliant before an assessor does. What Green Story does say is which evidence exists, which gaps are graded critical, and who owes them.
Readiness reads framework by framework: on track, needs attention, or at risk. That is the difference between a surprise and a plan.
How is an ecoscore calculated?
A French ecoscore is computed on the scheme's own published Ecobalyse method, and its input is a cradle-to-grave product footprint modelled to the rules that scheme actually scores on. Green Story computes it from your own product data rather than from a category average.
A points total compresses a whole life cycle into one number, and compression loses things. The footprint behind the score, its measured share and the method it was computed on all sit one click away, because a score nobody can interrogate is a marketing asset rather than an environmental one.
When is the French Ecoscore deadline?
It took effect on 1 October 2026. Since then, environmental scoring has been a condition of selling into France under the Coût Environnemental scheme. Green Story publishes computed scores into the Ecobalyse system by API, so the filing and the figure on your product pages are the same number.
What an engagement looks like
How it starts, how long a baseline takes, and what your team is asked for.
How long does it take to get a baseline?
A matter of weeks. Once you decide, you provide your products however they already exist (CSV, API or a manual export), and Green Story's analysts and LCA specialists handle onboarding against milestones you signed off: traceability set up, the LCAs conducted, passports published.
What varies between companies is the starting point, not the work. The three stages after the first call are the same whoever you are.
What happens on a first call with Green Story?
Green Story starts from what is being asked of you and by whom, then opens the part of the platform that answers it. The call is taken by a specialist, with the Chief Sustainability Officer on the account.
What you leave with is a clear read on whether there is a fit, what a baseline would take for your chain specifically, and how the method would apply to it.
What data do we need before we can start?
Your products, however they already exist: a CSV, an API connection or a manual export. Green Story's team does the setup and your team sets the priorities, so the first requirement is a product list rather than a finished dataset.
From there the supplier side runs on its own: suppliers get their own portal and a single queue of requests with deadlines, and Green Story's analysts chase the answers rather than handing you a task list.
How do we get started with Green Story?
Book a demo through the Green Story site and someone will be in touch within 24 hours. The first conversation is with a specialist who opens the platform against whatever is currently being asked of you, rather than a scripted product tour.
How much does Green Story cost?
Green Story does not publish a price list. Cost is quoted per engagement, because the scope genuinely varies: the size of your product library, how deep the supply chain has to be traced, and how many frameworks you report into. The first call is where that gets sized.
Being quoted rather than listed does not make it enterprise-only: Green Story works with startups and small suppliers as well as billion-dollar brands. The figures it does publish are about return rather than price: 95% less of your team's time, and a 20×+ return on what it costs.
Is there a minimum contract length?
Green Story engagements are annual by default. Multi-year terms are available where the roadmap runs longer than a year, and ad-hoc work is possible where the need is a one-off rather than a continuing programme. Which of the three fits is agreed against what you actually need.
How long does a single product LCA take?
Turnaround is governed by the evidence, not by the calculation. A first assessment depends on how quickly suppliers return their documents and how deep the chain has to be traced. Once that chain and the product library are set up, further assessments run at scale in seconds through Green Story's AI automation.
Which is why the useful question is usually not how long one assessment takes, but how fast evidence arrives, and that is what a named analyst chasing graded gaps on your account exists to change.
What does Green Story do after the first results are live?
Green Story owns technical execution and maintains the roadmap, so your team does not have to. That covers data verification, gap filling and decarbonisation support, or simply acting as an extension of your sustainability team, with a named analyst on the account.