The EU strategy for sustainable and circular textiles has set out the vision and concrete actions to ensure that by 2030 textile products placed on the EU market are long-lived and recyclable, made as much as possible of recycled fibres, free of hazardous substances and produced in respect of social rights and the environment.
“The EU textiles sustainability strategy is very ambitious. It looks to tackle issues such as the destruction of unsold products and the over reliance of the industry shipping used textiles to Africa. We will be watching the development of the strategy very closely as it is extremely likely that the UK government will look to follow suit. The UK is already looking at making retailers responsible for the safe disposal of garments at the end of life and UKFT is lobbying the government to help ensure we develop the technology and infrastructure to capture the value in discarded clothing,” Adam Mansell, CEO of UKFT, said.
According to the EU commission, by implementing the strategy, consumers will benefit longer from high quality textiles, fast fashion should be out of fashion, and economically profitable re-use and repair services should be widely available. In a competitive, resilient and innovative textiles sector, producers have to take responsibility for their products along the value chain, including when they become waste. In this way, the circular textiles ecosystem will be thriving, and be driven by sufficient capacities for innovative fibre-to-fibre recycling, while the incineration and landfilling of textiles has to be reduced to the minimum, UKFT said in a press release.
The specific measures will include ecodesign requirements for textiles, clearer information, a digital product passport and a mandatory EU extended producer responsibility scheme. It also foresees measures to tackle the unintentional release of microplastics from textiles, ensure the accuracy of green claims, and boost circular business models, including reuse and repair services. To address fast fashion, the Strategy also calls on companies to reduce the number of collections per year, take responsibility and act to minimise their carbon and environmental footprints, and on member states to adopt favourable taxation measures for the reuse and repair sector. The commission will promote the shift also with awareness-raising activities.
