Will Europe Take Responsibility For Its Waste? | Atmos

The EU is on the cusp of a major breakthrough for tackling textile waste. 

On March 13, the European Parliament voted in favor of making fashion brands and textile producers financially responsible for the collection, sorting, and recycling of their waste, a policy known as Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR). But with European Parliamentary elections taking place over the weekend, right in the middle of the legislative process, nothing is guaranteed.

Due to fashion’s prevailing high-volume, low-quality business model, around 12.6 million tonnes (12kg per person) of textile waste is generated in the EU each year and brands have dodged bearing the costs of cleaning up their own mess—until now.

“[Our efforts to regulate the industry] started about five years ago with us at the European Environment Agency [EEA] together with organizations like the Ellen MacArthur Foundation doing studies… [that] showed that on average the consumption of textiles in Europe has the fourth biggest impact on the environment and climate after food, housing, and mobility—and those sectors have been regulated for many years,” says Lars Fogh Mortensen, an EU expert on sustainability and the circular economy who works at the EEA.

The findings from these studies eventually led to the EU strategy for sustainable and circular textiles, and EPR was one of the recommendations therein. Under the proposed EPR scheme, fashion brands and textile producers will pay a fee—or “eco-contribution”—for each item they put on the market to cover the costs of dealing with the waste they create. Fees are eco-modulated, meaning a brand will pay more for a less sustainable item and less for a more sustainable item (brands could, in certain cases, even earn a bonus in the latter case). What constitutes more or less sustainable is still up for discussion, but it could align with another piece of EU legislation—the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation, which will set requirements for a garment’s durability and repairability, recycled content, and environmental footprint. 

The fees for a company’s textile waste will be managed by a Producer Responsibility Organisation (PRO), which will then redistribute them across the wider ecosystem. For Refashion, France’s PRO, this redistribution looks like eco-modulation bonus payments; the financing of repair and reuse funds; communication; stakeholder education and support; and payment of general fees and expenses.

The concept is solid: make brands pay to deal with the waste they create. But the details are hazy, and there are widespread concerns about whether the EU’s EPR will be effective in its implementation, and whether it goes far enough. In fact, a joint statement from organizations like Zero Waste Europe, Changing Markets Foundation, and En Mode Climat called out “grave shortcomings” such as the omission of target-setting for waste prevention, the fact that leather goods are exempt from eco-modulation, and the producer-dominant governance structure which effectively allows brands to write their own rules.

The type of legislation could also cause problems. Textile EPR will come in the form of a proposed revision to an existing piece of legislation called the Waste Framework Directive (WFD). A directive sets out a goal that EU countries must achieve, but it’s up to each member state to implement its own laws to achieve it. “There are a couple of commonalities, but once you start talking about the eco-modulation of fees or which products to cover, there is a diversity of views,” says María Luisa Martínez Díez, public affairs director at Global Fashion Agenda (GFA), which facilitates cross-sector forums and roundtables to progress global textile policy.

“The challenge is to allow some differences for national circumstances, but still have one system that plays together where things are more or less equal,” says Mortensen. This is referred to as harmonization. It’s not just crucial for ensuring that EPR functions as a connected ecosystem across the EU, it’s also necessary for compliance. “Companies have to adapt to EPR and if there are 27 different schemes and you are selling across the EU, how can you operate? We have to have a level playing field,” Mortensen adds.

France, the Netherlands, and Hungary are the only countries with textile EPR schemes in place right now, but none can act as a precise blueprint for an EU-wide system, according to Díez. 

Used textiles are currently captured at a rate of just 12% and it is widely accepted that “collection systems and the sorting and recycling infrastructures are unlikely to be ready to handle the expected additional amounts to be collected [from 2025],” according to a WFD proposal paper. Nonprofit industry organization ReHubs, for instance, is working to scale up the collection, sorting, processing, and recycling of textile waste in Europe to a capacity of 2.5 million tons by 2030. But that’s less waste than is generated in a year, posing a key question: will Europe still rely on the Global South to process much of its excess textile waste? And will EPR fund solutions in receiving countries?

“The way we define waste is quite simple: it is what people cannot profit from in their local area. Even if a garment has been sorted in Europe as being wearable, it is still waste when it enters Ghana until someone sells it,” says Liz Ricketts, cofounder and director of Accra-based nonprofit The Or Foundation. “If that’s the logic, then waste should only be exported if EPR money accompanies it.” 

The European Commission estimates that the costs of “collection and treatment”—which could include services like sorting and recycling—would equate to approximately €0.12 per item. But in its position paper for “globally accountable” EPR, The Or Foundation suggests fees should begin at $0.50 (€0.46) and go up to “at least” $2.50 (€2.31). “[Our estimated fee] is intended to cover not only collection, sorting, reuse, and repair in the Global North, but also [to cover the costs of preserving] the areas where it ends up,” Ricketts says, adding that 10% of the fee should be added to an environmental fund for the clean-up of the many tonnes of textile waste that already blight the Global South.

As it stands, the WFD revision doesn’t set out a distribution system for funds, meaning they could stay in the EU even when the textile waste does not. Nor does it set any limits on, or guidance for, production volumes, a factor both Ricketts and the aforementioned coalition of organizations say should be implemented as part of eco-modulation to incentivize producing less. 

Yet, Mortensen stresses that there are 16 pieces of fashion and textile legislation coming down the line, and EPR should be looked at as part of a bigger package. “The aim is that together with the revision of the ecodesign directive, the [introduction of] the product passport, and all these other measures, [these policies] will work in combination,” he says. Certainly, the EU is taking a robust, multi-pronged approach and EPR cannot be expected to solve all problems alone, but it is a crucial financial mechanism and if poorly implemented it could further entrench inequality into the textile waste ecosystem. 

The immediate next step for EPR is an Environment Council vote on the 17th of June to establish a “general approach” (a political agreement at the Council level). Then negotiations begin in earnest to hammer out the details—with a new parliament in place.

Last week’s EU Parliament election results will ultimately determine the state of the EU’s green policy for years to come. The center, which has been responsible for a raft of climate policies in recent years (some of which it ultimately watered down), largely held, but as was widely anticipated, the right and the populist far-right made gains. Liberals, and greens in particular, lost seats. It’s a reflection of a broader global shift to the right and the so-called “greenlash”—a reaction against the green policies that attracted voters in the 2019 elections.