Introduction
COP26 has just ended, and we all watched the world leaders setting their commitments for climate action for the upcoming years and decades. Whilst many of the countries are still struggling to set actionable plans on how to reduce their climate impact, the EU has laid the pathway for sustainability action for others to follow.
A couple of years ago, the EU made a remarkable commitment to become climate neutral by 2050 with the announcement of the European Green Deal. The Deal plays an important role in tackling global challenges, such as climate change and environmental degradation. It also sets an ambition for the EU to transition to a circular economy, where waste is eliminated, resources are circulated, and nature is regenerated.[1]With this in mind, last year the EU put forward its Circular Economy ActionPlan (CEAP)[2],which lays the foundations on how to make EU circular. The Plan highlights sectors where most of the transformation needs to happen, and the textiles industry is one of them. It also mentions some of the key policies that will be introduced in the coming months which will significantly impact our sector: EU Textile Strategy, Sustainable Product Initiative, Substantiating Green Claims Initiative, Empowering Consumers in Green Transition Initiative, and policies on waste. So let’s take a closer look into these upcoming initiatives and the change they will bring.
Laying the Bricks for a Sustainable Apparel and Footwear Sector
In 2022, the EU will be introducing the Sustainable Textile Strategy, which is an overarching framework laying the policy foundations for the future. As the title suggests, the Strategy aims to make the industry more sustainable by creating conditions and incentives to boost the competitiveness, sustainability, and resilience of the EU textile sector. While the Strategy will not be binding for companies, it will introduce the measures which may result in mandatory legislation. So what is in the pipeline?
The Textiles Strategy will provide a holistic set of initiatives tackling various environmental issues across the entire supply chain and the life cycle of a product:
· Product design – The Strategy will underline possible approaches for improving design for sustainability such as ensuring the uptake of secondary raw materials and tackling the presence of hazardous chemicals.
· Production – It will present actions to address weaknesses in sustainable production, e.g., address the presence of substances of concern.
· Consumption– Incentives for ‘product as service’ and other sustainable business models will be presented. The Strategy will also reinforce human rights and due diligence across the value chains, improving traceability and transparency.
· End-use – The Textile Strategy will set up targets to significantly step-up reuse and recycling efforts in the EU, improving textile waste collection and recycling in the Member States as well as capacity building. It will also look into the role of EPR in promoting sustainable textiles and the treatment of textile waste in line with the waste hierarchy.
Other measures such as setting targets for Green Procurement and steering international cooperation and partnerships towards more sustainable consumption and production patterns, e.g., creating a Global Textile Alliance will also be undertaken. In this regard, it is important to note that these measures are not set in stone and other initiatives may be considered as part of the Textile Strategy. We will only know after the release of the Strategy which is scheduled to be launched in March 2022.
Designing Sustainable Textiles
Another critical policy measure for textiles is the Sustainable Product Initiative (SPI). While this policy is horizontal, meaning that it will apply to other sectors as well, it will introduce significant changes to the way textile products are being designed. The SPI aims to contribute to keeping climate and environmental impacts linked to resource and energy use, production, and use of products within planetary boundaries. One of its intentions is to expand the Ecodesign Directive to be applied to other sectors. It is still not clear if the textiles sector will fall under the expansion or if other instruments regulating the design of products in our sector will be created. This will be known after theProposal for SPI is published in Q1 2022.
Overall, the SPI will introduce substantial changes in terms of product design, production processes, and consumers' rights. The legislation could set minimum or maximum thresholds on certain variables involving durability, recyclability, repairability, and reusability of a product, e.g.,setting a minimum recycled content (per product, product category, product portfolio). The SPI may also set other sustainability principles and specific requirements linked to environmental and, potentially social aspects. Another important development that may come as part of this initiative is the creation of a digital product passport. The passport would be used to as a one-stop shop to communicate environmental and potentially social information to market actors along the value chain. The digital product passport may also be used to communicate certain environmental information to the consumers.
In addition, the SPI may establish EU rules to make producers responsible for providing more circular products, e.g., providing products as a service or providing repair. Requirements on mandatory sustainability labelling may also be established, including mandatory minimum sustainability requirements on public procurement. Lastly, we can also expect measures to facilitate recycled content or remanufacturing, track the use of hazardous substances in production processes, and the introduction of a ban on the destruction of unsold durable goods. All of these measures ought to promote sustainable products in European Markets.
A call for more transparency
Transparency is one of the other topics high on the EU’s agenda. In the coming months, we expect two key policies to impact the way information is communicated to consumers: Substantiating the Green Claims Initiative and the Empowering the Consumers in Green Transition Initiative. Just like in the case of SPI, the two initiatives are horizontal and will affect other sectors as well.
Policies on transparency aim at tackling greenwashing and will address the issue of proliferation of methodologies and green labels. They will ensure that consumers obtain reliable and relevant information on products, e.g., on their lifespan and repair options. In this regard, the EU plans to set minimum requirements for sustainability logos and labels.
The two initiatives will address different aspects of transparency. The Green Claims initiative may require companies to substantiate any impact-related claims on their products/services by using a standard method for quantifying them. With this, the European Commission aims at setting one common EU-level methodology for assessing the green claims.If the common method is imposed, then the market-based mechanisms for measuring the environmental impact of a product would potentially have to be aligned with the common methodology. It is very likely that the current EU's product environmental footprint (PEF) methodology will be selected as the basis. Currently, the PEF covers 16 impact categories including climate change, resource use, minerals and metals, freshwaters, human toxicity, etc. Claims that will not fall under the 16 categories, will be addressed by the Empowering the Consumers Initiative, which is more general.
The Empowering the Consumers Initiative may require companies to specify in more detail the information on products’ sustainability (e.g., environmental characteristics, durability, and reparability) to be provided to consumers as part of the material information at the point of sale. This could involve laying down further requirements to make the information accurate, e.g., establishing criteria to ensure the transparency and reliability of labels/logos or online IT tools. The Initiative could also define and prohibit greenwashing and early product failure. It could also regulate the use of misleading words such as ‘sustainable, ethical, green, etc.,’ which could be prohibited in the future unless properly substantiated information is provided.
Overall, the two initiatives will not only protect the consumers against misleading information but will also enable the companies to make comparable claims against a standard methodology.
Less waste and more resources
Textiles waste became an important topic on the EU’s policy agenda after the revision of the Waste Framework Directive in 2018, which introduced an obligation for the EU Member States to separately collect textiles waste by 2025. This left national and EU policy makers to wonder what to do with the textiles waste and how to reuse, recycle or treat it. One of the proposed solutions was to use the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) scheme. In this regard, the EU Commission has promised to publish its Guidelines on EPR for textiles next year. While the EPR Guidelines will not be binding, they will provide more guidance to the EU Member States as to how to regulate their national EPRs. At the same time, several EU Member States, such as the Netherlands, Sweden, Spain, Italy, and Greece are working on introducing national EPR schemes for textiles, whereas France’s EPR scheme is already on the market for 10 years paving the way for others.
Besides this, the EU will again revise the Waste Framework Directive in the coming years, which may lead to new requirements for the Member States and will subsequently affect the textiles business. In the current planning, the Commission foresees measures to reduce waste generation through re-use of products or components. It will also establish obligations for reducing mixed waste and increasing preparation for re-use or recycling of waste.
Another initiative that may impact textiles is the Revision of Waste Shipment Regulation, scheduled to take place in late 2021. The purpose of the review is to facilitate recycling in the EU and to make more stringent the provisions on shipment to third countries. Among the other things, we can expect measures to restrict exports of waste that have harmful environmental and health impacts in third countries. For the textiles industry, the revised regulation may place a ban on certain types of textiles waste to be exported to third countries.
The Commission will also undertake various incentives to boost textile recycling infrastructure and the secondary raw material market, e.g., end of waste criteria for certain types of textiles may be created in the coming years.
More accountability in the supply chains
Finally, the EU will launch the Sustainable Corporate Governance Initiative to address traceability and social issues in the textile supply chain. The Initiative aims at helping companies to better manage sustainability-related matters in their operations and value chains.
The Sustainable Corporate Governance Initiative is expected to introduce mandatory due diligence for companies covering both social and environmental aspects. It may also expand the director’s duty of care which would include sustainability considerations and stakeholders’ interests. While the precise requirements will only be known after the publication of the Proposal (scheduled to be launched in December this year),companies may expect civil liability to be imposed for misconduct in the supply chains or non-compliance.
This legislation will most likely be applied horizontally and across different sectors. There is also a chance that sector-specific guidelines on due diligence will be developed for the textiles industry.
In a nutshell
Global action is needed more than ever to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement and stay in line with our planet’s resources, and textiles sector must play its role.The upcoming EU policies impacting our sector will be a key change driver stimulating the creation of more circular and sustainable products. The Policy Hub – Circularity for Apparel and Footwear works hard to make sure that these policies create a real change and provide an even level playing field for the textiles industry. Learn more about our work at www.policyhub.org
[1] See Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s definition of the circular economy.
[2]The Circular Economy Action Plan is a non-binding document that introduces legislative and non-legislative measures that the EU Commission will undertake in the upcoming years to accelerate circularity in the EU.
Introduction
COP26 has just ended, and we all watched the world leaders setting their commitments for climate action for the upcoming years and decades. Whilst many of the countries are still struggling to set actionable plans on how to reduce their climate impact, the EU has laid the pathway for sustainability action for others to follow.
A couple of years ago, the EU made a remarkable commitment to become climate neutral by 2050 with the announcement of the European Green Deal. The Deal plays an important role in tackling global challenges, such as climate change and environmental degradation. It also sets an ambition for the EU to transition to a circular economy, where waste is eliminated, resources are circulated, and nature is regenerated.[1]With this in mind, last year the EU put forward its Circular Economy ActionPlan (CEAP)[2],which lays the foundations on how to make EU circular. The Plan highlights sectors where most of the transformation needs to happen, and the textiles industry is one of them. It also mentions some of the key policies that will be introduced in the coming months which will significantly impact our sector: EU Textile Strategy, Sustainable Product Initiative, Substantiating Green Claims Initiative, Empowering Consumers in Green Transition Initiative, and policies on waste. So let’s take a closer look into these upcoming initiatives and the change they will bring.
Laying the Bricks for a Sustainable Apparel and Footwear Sector
In 2022, the EU will be introducing the Sustainable Textile Strategy, which is an overarching framework laying the policy foundations for the future. As the title suggests, the Strategy aims to make the industry more sustainable by creating conditions and incentives to boost the competitiveness, sustainability, and resilience of the EU textile sector. While the Strategy will not be binding for companies, it will introduce the measures which may result in mandatory legislation. So what is in the pipeline?
The Textiles Strategy will provide a holistic set of initiatives tackling various environmental issues across the entire supply chain and the life cycle of a product:
· Product design – The Strategy will underline possible approaches for improving design for sustainability such as ensuring the uptake of secondary raw materials and tackling the presence of hazardous chemicals.
· Production – It will present actions to address weaknesses in sustainable production, e.g., address the presence of substances of concern.
· Consumption– Incentives for ‘product as service’ and other sustainable business models will be presented. The Strategy will also reinforce human rights and due diligence across the value chains, improving traceability and transparency.
· End-use – The Textile Strategy will set up targets to significantly step-up reuse and recycling efforts in the EU, improving textile waste collection and recycling in the Member States as well as capacity building. It will also look into the role of EPR in promoting sustainable textiles and the treatment of textile waste in line with the waste hierarchy.
Other measures such as setting targets for Green Procurement and steering international cooperation and partnerships towards more sustainable consumption and production patterns, e.g., creating a Global Textile Alliance will also be undertaken. In this regard, it is important to note that these measures are not set in stone and other initiatives may be considered as part of the Textile Strategy. We will only know after the release of the Strategy which is scheduled to be launched in March 2022.
Designing Sustainable Textiles
Another critical policy measure for textiles is the Sustainable Product Initiative (SPI). While this policy is horizontal, meaning that it will apply to other sectors as well, it will introduce significant changes to the way textile products are being designed. The SPI aims to contribute to keeping climate and environmental impacts linked to resource and energy use, production, and use of products within planetary boundaries. One of its intentions is to expand the Ecodesign Directive to be applied to other sectors. It is still not clear if the textiles sector will fall under the expansion or if other instruments regulating the design of products in our sector will be created. This will be known after theProposal for SPI is published in Q1 2022.
Overall, the SPI will introduce substantial changes in terms of product design, production processes, and consumers' rights. The legislation could set minimum or maximum thresholds on certain variables involving durability, recyclability, repairability, and reusability of a product, e.g.,setting a minimum recycled content (per product, product category, product portfolio). The SPI may also set other sustainability principles and specific requirements linked to environmental and, potentially social aspects. Another important development that may come as part of this initiative is the creation of a digital product passport. The passport would be used to as a one-stop shop to communicate environmental and potentially social information to market actors along the value chain. The digital product passport may also be used to communicate certain environmental information to the consumers.
In addition, the SPI may establish EU rules to make producers responsible for providing more circular products, e.g., providing products as a service or providing repair. Requirements on mandatory sustainability labelling may also be established, including mandatory minimum sustainability requirements on public procurement. Lastly, we can also expect measures to facilitate recycled content or remanufacturing, track the use of hazardous substances in production processes, and the introduction of a ban on the destruction of unsold durable goods. All of these measures ought to promote sustainable products in European Markets.
A call for more transparency
Transparency is one of the other topics high on the EU’s agenda. In the coming months, we expect two key policies to impact the way information is communicated to consumers: Substantiating the Green Claims Initiative and the Empowering the Consumers in Green Transition Initiative. Just like in the case of SPI, the two initiatives are horizontal and will affect other sectors as well.
Policies on transparency aim at tackling greenwashing and will address the issue of proliferation of methodologies and green labels. They will ensure that consumers obtain reliable and relevant information on products, e.g., on their lifespan and repair options. In this regard, the EU plans to set minimum requirements for sustainability logos and labels.
The two initiatives will address different aspects of transparency. The Green Claims initiative may require companies to substantiate any impact-related claims on their products/services by using a standard method for quantifying them. With this, the European Commission aims at setting one common EU-level methodology for assessing the green claims.If the common method is imposed, then the market-based mechanisms for measuring the environmental impact of a product would potentially have to be aligned with the common methodology. It is very likely that the current EU's product environmental footprint (PEF) methodology will be selected as the basis. Currently, the PEF covers 16 impact categories including climate change, resource use, minerals and metals, freshwaters, human toxicity, etc. Claims that will not fall under the 16 categories, will be addressed by the Empowering the Consumers Initiative, which is more general.
The Empowering the Consumers Initiative may require companies to specify in more detail the information on products’ sustainability (e.g., environmental characteristics, durability, and reparability) to be provided to consumers as part of the material information at the point of sale. This could involve laying down further requirements to make the information accurate, e.g., establishing criteria to ensure the transparency and reliability of labels/logos or online IT tools. The Initiative could also define and prohibit greenwashing and early product failure. It could also regulate the use of misleading words such as ‘sustainable, ethical, green, etc.,’ which could be prohibited in the future unless properly substantiated information is provided.
Overall, the two initiatives will not only protect the consumers against misleading information but will also enable the companies to make comparable claims against a standard methodology.
Less waste and more resources
Textiles waste became an important topic on the EU’s policy agenda after the revision of the Waste Framework Directive in 2018, which introduced an obligation for the EU Member States to separately collect textiles waste by 2025. This left national and EU policy makers to wonder what to do with the textiles waste and how to reuse, recycle or treat it. One of the proposed solutions was to use the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) scheme. In this regard, the EU Commission has promised to publish its Guidelines on EPR for textiles next year. While the EPR Guidelines will not be binding, they will provide more guidance to the EU Member States as to how to regulate their national EPRs. At the same time, several EU Member States, such as the Netherlands, Sweden, Spain, Italy, and Greece are working on introducing national EPR schemes for textiles, whereas France’s EPR scheme is already on the market for 10 years paving the way for others.
Besides this, the EU will again revise the Waste Framework Directive in the coming years, which may lead to new requirements for the Member States and will subsequently affect the textiles business. In the current planning, the Commission foresees measures to reduce waste generation through re-use of products or components. It will also establish obligations for reducing mixed waste and increasing preparation for re-use or recycling of waste.
Another initiative that may impact textiles is the Revision of Waste Shipment Regulation, scheduled to take place in late 2021. The purpose of the review is to facilitate recycling in the EU and to make more stringent the provisions on shipment to third countries. Among the other things, we can expect measures to restrict exports of waste that have harmful environmental and health impacts in third countries. For the textiles industry, the revised regulation may place a ban on certain types of textiles waste to be exported to third countries.
The Commission will also undertake various incentives to boost textile recycling infrastructure and the secondary raw material market, e.g., end of waste criteria for certain types of textiles may be created in the coming years.
More accountability in the supply chains
Finally, the EU will launch the Sustainable Corporate Governance Initiative to address traceability and social issues in the textile supply chain. The Initiative aims at helping companies to better manage sustainability-related matters in their operations and value chains.
The Sustainable Corporate Governance Initiative is expected to introduce mandatory due diligence for companies covering both social and environmental aspects. It may also expand the director’s duty of care which would include sustainability considerations and stakeholders’ interests. While the precise requirements will only be known after the publication of the Proposal (scheduled to be launched in December this year),companies may expect civil liability to be imposed for misconduct in the supply chains or non-compliance.
This legislation will most likely be applied horizontally and across different sectors. There is also a chance that sector-specific guidelines on due diligence will be developed for the textiles industry.
In a nutshell
Global action is needed more than ever to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement and stay in line with our planet’s resources, and textiles sector must play its role.The upcoming EU policies impacting our sector will be a key change driver stimulating the creation of more circular and sustainable products. The Policy Hub – Circularity for Apparel and Footwear works hard to make sure that these policies create a real change and provide an even level playing field for the textiles industry. Learn more about our work at www.policyhub.org
[1] See Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s definition of the circular economy.
[2]The Circular Economy Action Plan is a non-binding document that introduces legislative and non-legislative measures that the EU Commission will undertake in the upcoming years to accelerate circularity in the EU.
Introduction
COP26 has just ended, and we all watched the world leaders setting their commitments for climate action for the upcoming years and decades. Whilst many of the countries are still struggling to set actionable plans on how to reduce their climate impact, the EU has laid the pathway for sustainability action for others to follow.
A couple of years ago, the EU made a remarkable commitment to become climate neutral by 2050 with the announcement of the European Green Deal. The Deal plays an important role in tackling global challenges, such as climate change and environmental degradation. It also sets an ambition for the EU to transition to a circular economy, where waste is eliminated, resources are circulated, and nature is regenerated.[1]With this in mind, last year the EU put forward its Circular Economy ActionPlan (CEAP)[2],which lays the foundations on how to make EU circular. The Plan highlights sectors where most of the transformation needs to happen, and the textiles industry is one of them. It also mentions some of the key policies that will be introduced in the coming months which will significantly impact our sector: EU Textile Strategy, Sustainable Product Initiative, Substantiating Green Claims Initiative, Empowering Consumers in Green Transition Initiative, and policies on waste. So let’s take a closer look into these upcoming initiatives and the change they will bring.
Laying the Bricks for a Sustainable Apparel and Footwear Sector
In 2022, the EU will be introducing the Sustainable Textile Strategy, which is an overarching framework laying the policy foundations for the future. As the title suggests, the Strategy aims to make the industry more sustainable by creating conditions and incentives to boost the competitiveness, sustainability, and resilience of the EU textile sector. While the Strategy will not be binding for companies, it will introduce the measures which may result in mandatory legislation. So what is in the pipeline?
The Textiles Strategy will provide a holistic set of initiatives tackling various environmental issues across the entire supply chain and the life cycle of a product:
· Product design – The Strategy will underline possible approaches for improving design for sustainability such as ensuring the uptake of secondary raw materials and tackling the presence of hazardous chemicals.
· Production – It will present actions to address weaknesses in sustainable production, e.g., address the presence of substances of concern.
· Consumption– Incentives for ‘product as service’ and other sustainable business models will be presented. The Strategy will also reinforce human rights and due diligence across the value chains, improving traceability and transparency.
· End-use – The Textile Strategy will set up targets to significantly step-up reuse and recycling efforts in the EU, improving textile waste collection and recycling in the Member States as well as capacity building. It will also look into the role of EPR in promoting sustainable textiles and the treatment of textile waste in line with the waste hierarchy.
Other measures such as setting targets for Green Procurement and steering international cooperation and partnerships towards more sustainable consumption and production patterns, e.g., creating a Global Textile Alliance will also be undertaken. In this regard, it is important to note that these measures are not set in stone and other initiatives may be considered as part of the Textile Strategy. We will only know after the release of the Strategy which is scheduled to be launched in March 2022.
Designing Sustainable Textiles
Another critical policy measure for textiles is the Sustainable Product Initiative (SPI). While this policy is horizontal, meaning that it will apply to other sectors as well, it will introduce significant changes to the way textile products are being designed. The SPI aims to contribute to keeping climate and environmental impacts linked to resource and energy use, production, and use of products within planetary boundaries. One of its intentions is to expand the Ecodesign Directive to be applied to other sectors. It is still not clear if the textiles sector will fall under the expansion or if other instruments regulating the design of products in our sector will be created. This will be known after theProposal for SPI is published in Q1 2022.
Overall, the SPI will introduce substantial changes in terms of product design, production processes, and consumers' rights. The legislation could set minimum or maximum thresholds on certain variables involving durability, recyclability, repairability, and reusability of a product, e.g.,setting a minimum recycled content (per product, product category, product portfolio). The SPI may also set other sustainability principles and specific requirements linked to environmental and, potentially social aspects. Another important development that may come as part of this initiative is the creation of a digital product passport. The passport would be used to as a one-stop shop to communicate environmental and potentially social information to market actors along the value chain. The digital product passport may also be used to communicate certain environmental information to the consumers.
In addition, the SPI may establish EU rules to make producers responsible for providing more circular products, e.g., providing products as a service or providing repair. Requirements on mandatory sustainability labelling may also be established, including mandatory minimum sustainability requirements on public procurement. Lastly, we can also expect measures to facilitate recycled content or remanufacturing, track the use of hazardous substances in production processes, and the introduction of a ban on the destruction of unsold durable goods. All of these measures ought to promote sustainable products in European Markets.
A call for more transparency
Transparency is one of the other topics high on the EU’s agenda. In the coming months, we expect two key policies to impact the way information is communicated to consumers: Substantiating the Green Claims Initiative and the Empowering the Consumers in Green Transition Initiative. Just like in the case of SPI, the two initiatives are horizontal and will affect other sectors as well.
Policies on transparency aim at tackling greenwashing and will address the issue of proliferation of methodologies and green labels. They will ensure that consumers obtain reliable and relevant information on products, e.g., on their lifespan and repair options. In this regard, the EU plans to set minimum requirements for sustainability logos and labels.
The two initiatives will address different aspects of transparency. The Green Claims initiative may require companies to substantiate any impact-related claims on their products/services by using a standard method for quantifying them. With this, the European Commission aims at setting one common EU-level methodology for assessing the green claims.If the common method is imposed, then the market-based mechanisms for measuring the environmental impact of a product would potentially have to be aligned with the common methodology. It is very likely that the current EU's product environmental footprint (PEF) methodology will be selected as the basis. Currently, the PEF covers 16 impact categories including climate change, resource use, minerals and metals, freshwaters, human toxicity, etc. Claims that will not fall under the 16 categories, will be addressed by the Empowering the Consumers Initiative, which is more general.
The Empowering the Consumers Initiative may require companies to specify in more detail the information on products’ sustainability (e.g., environmental characteristics, durability, and reparability) to be provided to consumers as part of the material information at the point of sale. This could involve laying down further requirements to make the information accurate, e.g., establishing criteria to ensure the transparency and reliability of labels/logos or online IT tools. The Initiative could also define and prohibit greenwashing and early product failure. It could also regulate the use of misleading words such as ‘sustainable, ethical, green, etc.,’ which could be prohibited in the future unless properly substantiated information is provided.
Overall, the two initiatives will not only protect the consumers against misleading information but will also enable the companies to make comparable claims against a standard methodology.
Less waste and more resources
Textiles waste became an important topic on the EU’s policy agenda after the revision of the Waste Framework Directive in 2018, which introduced an obligation for the EU Member States to separately collect textiles waste by 2025. This left national and EU policy makers to wonder what to do with the textiles waste and how to reuse, recycle or treat it. One of the proposed solutions was to use the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) scheme. In this regard, the EU Commission has promised to publish its Guidelines on EPR for textiles next year. While the EPR Guidelines will not be binding, they will provide more guidance to the EU Member States as to how to regulate their national EPRs. At the same time, several EU Member States, such as the Netherlands, Sweden, Spain, Italy, and Greece are working on introducing national EPR schemes for textiles, whereas France’s EPR scheme is already on the market for 10 years paving the way for others.
Besides this, the EU will again revise the Waste Framework Directive in the coming years, which may lead to new requirements for the Member States and will subsequently affect the textiles business. In the current planning, the Commission foresees measures to reduce waste generation through re-use of products or components. It will also establish obligations for reducing mixed waste and increasing preparation for re-use or recycling of waste.
Another initiative that may impact textiles is the Revision of Waste Shipment Regulation, scheduled to take place in late 2021. The purpose of the review is to facilitate recycling in the EU and to make more stringent the provisions on shipment to third countries. Among the other things, we can expect measures to restrict exports of waste that have harmful environmental and health impacts in third countries. For the textiles industry, the revised regulation may place a ban on certain types of textiles waste to be exported to third countries.
The Commission will also undertake various incentives to boost textile recycling infrastructure and the secondary raw material market, e.g., end of waste criteria for certain types of textiles may be created in the coming years.
More accountability in the supply chains
Finally, the EU will launch the Sustainable Corporate Governance Initiative to address traceability and social issues in the textile supply chain. The Initiative aims at helping companies to better manage sustainability-related matters in their operations and value chains.
The Sustainable Corporate Governance Initiative is expected to introduce mandatory due diligence for companies covering both social and environmental aspects. It may also expand the director’s duty of care which would include sustainability considerations and stakeholders’ interests. While the precise requirements will only be known after the publication of the Proposal (scheduled to be launched in December this year),companies may expect civil liability to be imposed for misconduct in the supply chains or non-compliance.
This legislation will most likely be applied horizontally and across different sectors. There is also a chance that sector-specific guidelines on due diligence will be developed for the textiles industry.
In a nutshell
Global action is needed more than ever to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement and stay in line with our planet’s resources, and textiles sector must play its role.The upcoming EU policies impacting our sector will be a key change driver stimulating the creation of more circular and sustainable products. The Policy Hub – Circularity for Apparel and Footwear works hard to make sure that these policies create a real change and provide an even level playing field for the textiles industry. Learn more about our work at www.policyhub.org
[1] See Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s definition of the circular economy.
[2]The Circular Economy Action Plan is a non-binding document that introduces legislative and non-legislative measures that the EU Commission will undertake in the upcoming years to accelerate circularity in the EU.
Introduction
COP26 has just ended, and we all watched the world leaders setting their commitments for climate action for the upcoming years and decades. Whilst many of the countries are still struggling to set actionable plans on how to reduce their climate impact, the EU has laid the pathway for sustainability action for others to follow.
A couple of years ago, the EU made a remarkable commitment to become climate neutral by 2050 with the announcement of the European Green Deal. The Deal plays an important role in tackling global challenges, such as climate change and environmental degradation. It also sets an ambition for the EU to transition to a circular economy, where waste is eliminated, resources are circulated, and nature is regenerated.[1]With this in mind, last year the EU put forward its Circular Economy ActionPlan (CEAP)[2],which lays the foundations on how to make EU circular. The Plan highlights sectors where most of the transformation needs to happen, and the textiles industry is one of them. It also mentions some of the key policies that will be introduced in the coming months which will significantly impact our sector: EU Textile Strategy, Sustainable Product Initiative, Substantiating Green Claims Initiative, Empowering Consumers in Green Transition Initiative, and policies on waste. So let’s take a closer look into these upcoming initiatives and the change they will bring.
Laying the Bricks for a Sustainable Apparel and Footwear Sector
In 2022, the EU will be introducing the Sustainable Textile Strategy, which is an overarching framework laying the policy foundations for the future. As the title suggests, the Strategy aims to make the industry more sustainable by creating conditions and incentives to boost the competitiveness, sustainability, and resilience of the EU textile sector. While the Strategy will not be binding for companies, it will introduce the measures which may result in mandatory legislation. So what is in the pipeline?
The Textiles Strategy will provide a holistic set of initiatives tackling various environmental issues across the entire supply chain and the life cycle of a product:
· Product design – The Strategy will underline possible approaches for improving design for sustainability such as ensuring the uptake of secondary raw materials and tackling the presence of hazardous chemicals.
· Production – It will present actions to address weaknesses in sustainable production, e.g., address the presence of substances of concern.
· Consumption– Incentives for ‘product as service’ and other sustainable business models will be presented. The Strategy will also reinforce human rights and due diligence across the value chains, improving traceability and transparency.
· End-use – The Textile Strategy will set up targets to significantly step-up reuse and recycling efforts in the EU, improving textile waste collection and recycling in the Member States as well as capacity building. It will also look into the role of EPR in promoting sustainable textiles and the treatment of textile waste in line with the waste hierarchy.
Other measures such as setting targets for Green Procurement and steering international cooperation and partnerships towards more sustainable consumption and production patterns, e.g., creating a Global Textile Alliance will also be undertaken. In this regard, it is important to note that these measures are not set in stone and other initiatives may be considered as part of the Textile Strategy. We will only know after the release of the Strategy which is scheduled to be launched in March 2022.
Designing Sustainable Textiles
Another critical policy measure for textiles is the Sustainable Product Initiative (SPI). While this policy is horizontal, meaning that it will apply to other sectors as well, it will introduce significant changes to the way textile products are being designed. The SPI aims to contribute to keeping climate and environmental impacts linked to resource and energy use, production, and use of products within planetary boundaries. One of its intentions is to expand the Ecodesign Directive to be applied to other sectors. It is still not clear if the textiles sector will fall under the expansion or if other instruments regulating the design of products in our sector will be created. This will be known after theProposal for SPI is published in Q1 2022.
Overall, the SPI will introduce substantial changes in terms of product design, production processes, and consumers' rights. The legislation could set minimum or maximum thresholds on certain variables involving durability, recyclability, repairability, and reusability of a product, e.g.,setting a minimum recycled content (per product, product category, product portfolio). The SPI may also set other sustainability principles and specific requirements linked to environmental and, potentially social aspects. Another important development that may come as part of this initiative is the creation of a digital product passport. The passport would be used to as a one-stop shop to communicate environmental and potentially social information to market actors along the value chain. The digital product passport may also be used to communicate certain environmental information to the consumers.
In addition, the SPI may establish EU rules to make producers responsible for providing more circular products, e.g., providing products as a service or providing repair. Requirements on mandatory sustainability labelling may also be established, including mandatory minimum sustainability requirements on public procurement. Lastly, we can also expect measures to facilitate recycled content or remanufacturing, track the use of hazardous substances in production processes, and the introduction of a ban on the destruction of unsold durable goods. All of these measures ought to promote sustainable products in European Markets.
A call for more transparency
Transparency is one of the other topics high on the EU’s agenda. In the coming months, we expect two key policies to impact the way information is communicated to consumers: Substantiating the Green Claims Initiative and the Empowering the Consumers in Green Transition Initiative. Just like in the case of SPI, the two initiatives are horizontal and will affect other sectors as well.
Policies on transparency aim at tackling greenwashing and will address the issue of proliferation of methodologies and green labels. They will ensure that consumers obtain reliable and relevant information on products, e.g., on their lifespan and repair options. In this regard, the EU plans to set minimum requirements for sustainability logos and labels.
The two initiatives will address different aspects of transparency. The Green Claims initiative may require companies to substantiate any impact-related claims on their products/services by using a standard method for quantifying them. With this, the European Commission aims at setting one common EU-level methodology for assessing the green claims.If the common method is imposed, then the market-based mechanisms for measuring the environmental impact of a product would potentially have to be aligned with the common methodology. It is very likely that the current EU's product environmental footprint (PEF) methodology will be selected as the basis. Currently, the PEF covers 16 impact categories including climate change, resource use, minerals and metals, freshwaters, human toxicity, etc. Claims that will not fall under the 16 categories, will be addressed by the Empowering the Consumers Initiative, which is more general.
The Empowering the Consumers Initiative may require companies to specify in more detail the information on products’ sustainability (e.g., environmental characteristics, durability, and reparability) to be provided to consumers as part of the material information at the point of sale. This could involve laying down further requirements to make the information accurate, e.g., establishing criteria to ensure the transparency and reliability of labels/logos or online IT tools. The Initiative could also define and prohibit greenwashing and early product failure. It could also regulate the use of misleading words such as ‘sustainable, ethical, green, etc.,’ which could be prohibited in the future unless properly substantiated information is provided.
Overall, the two initiatives will not only protect the consumers against misleading information but will also enable the companies to make comparable claims against a standard methodology.
Less waste and more resources
Textiles waste became an important topic on the EU’s policy agenda after the revision of the Waste Framework Directive in 2018, which introduced an obligation for the EU Member States to separately collect textiles waste by 2025. This left national and EU policy makers to wonder what to do with the textiles waste and how to reuse, recycle or treat it. One of the proposed solutions was to use the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) scheme. In this regard, the EU Commission has promised to publish its Guidelines on EPR for textiles next year. While the EPR Guidelines will not be binding, they will provide more guidance to the EU Member States as to how to regulate their national EPRs. At the same time, several EU Member States, such as the Netherlands, Sweden, Spain, Italy, and Greece are working on introducing national EPR schemes for textiles, whereas France’s EPR scheme is already on the market for 10 years paving the way for others.
Besides this, the EU will again revise the Waste Framework Directive in the coming years, which may lead to new requirements for the Member States and will subsequently affect the textiles business. In the current planning, the Commission foresees measures to reduce waste generation through re-use of products or components. It will also establish obligations for reducing mixed waste and increasing preparation for re-use or recycling of waste.
Another initiative that may impact textiles is the Revision of Waste Shipment Regulation, scheduled to take place in late 2021. The purpose of the review is to facilitate recycling in the EU and to make more stringent the provisions on shipment to third countries. Among the other things, we can expect measures to restrict exports of waste that have harmful environmental and health impacts in third countries. For the textiles industry, the revised regulation may place a ban on certain types of textiles waste to be exported to third countries.
The Commission will also undertake various incentives to boost textile recycling infrastructure and the secondary raw material market, e.g., end of waste criteria for certain types of textiles may be created in the coming years.
More accountability in the supply chains
Finally, the EU will launch the Sustainable Corporate Governance Initiative to address traceability and social issues in the textile supply chain. The Initiative aims at helping companies to better manage sustainability-related matters in their operations and value chains.
The Sustainable Corporate Governance Initiative is expected to introduce mandatory due diligence for companies covering both social and environmental aspects. It may also expand the director’s duty of care which would include sustainability considerations and stakeholders’ interests. While the precise requirements will only be known after the publication of the Proposal (scheduled to be launched in December this year),companies may expect civil liability to be imposed for misconduct in the supply chains or non-compliance.
This legislation will most likely be applied horizontally and across different sectors. There is also a chance that sector-specific guidelines on due diligence will be developed for the textiles industry.
In a nutshell
Global action is needed more than ever to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement and stay in line with our planet’s resources, and textiles sector must play its role.The upcoming EU policies impacting our sector will be a key change driver stimulating the creation of more circular and sustainable products. The Policy Hub – Circularity for Apparel and Footwear works hard to make sure that these policies create a real change and provide an even level playing field for the textiles industry. Learn more about our work at www.policyhub.org
[1] See Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s definition of the circular economy.
[2]The Circular Economy Action Plan is a non-binding document that introduces legislative and non-legislative measures that the EU Commission will undertake in the upcoming years to accelerate circularity in the EU.
Introduction
COP26 has just ended, and we all watched the world leaders setting their commitments for climate action for the upcoming years and decades. Whilst many of the countries are still struggling to set actionable plans on how to reduce their climate impact, the EU has laid the pathway for sustainability action for others to follow.
A couple of years ago, the EU made a remarkable commitment to become climate neutral by 2050 with the announcement of the European Green Deal. The Deal plays an important role in tackling global challenges, such as climate change and environmental degradation. It also sets an ambition for the EU to transition to a circular economy, where waste is eliminated, resources are circulated, and nature is regenerated.[1]With this in mind, last year the EU put forward its Circular Economy ActionPlan (CEAP)[2],which lays the foundations on how to make EU circular. The Plan highlights sectors where most of the transformation needs to happen, and the textiles industry is one of them. It also mentions some of the key policies that will be introduced in the coming months which will significantly impact our sector: EU Textile Strategy, Sustainable Product Initiative, Substantiating Green Claims Initiative, Empowering Consumers in Green Transition Initiative, and policies on waste. So let’s take a closer look into these upcoming initiatives and the change they will bring.
Laying the Bricks for a Sustainable Apparel and Footwear Sector
In 2022, the EU will be introducing the Sustainable Textile Strategy, which is an overarching framework laying the policy foundations for the future. As the title suggests, the Strategy aims to make the industry more sustainable by creating conditions and incentives to boost the competitiveness, sustainability, and resilience of the EU textile sector. While the Strategy will not be binding for companies, it will introduce the measures which may result in mandatory legislation. So what is in the pipeline?
The Textiles Strategy will provide a holistic set of initiatives tackling various environmental issues across the entire supply chain and the life cycle of a product:
· Product design – The Strategy will underline possible approaches for improving design for sustainability such as ensuring the uptake of secondary raw materials and tackling the presence of hazardous chemicals.
· Production – It will present actions to address weaknesses in sustainable production, e.g., address the presence of substances of concern.
· Consumption– Incentives for ‘product as service’ and other sustainable business models will be presented. The Strategy will also reinforce human rights and due diligence across the value chains, improving traceability and transparency.
· End-use – The Textile Strategy will set up targets to significantly step-up reuse and recycling efforts in the EU, improving textile waste collection and recycling in the Member States as well as capacity building. It will also look into the role of EPR in promoting sustainable textiles and the treatment of textile waste in line with the waste hierarchy.
Other measures such as setting targets for Green Procurement and steering international cooperation and partnerships towards more sustainable consumption and production patterns, e.g., creating a Global Textile Alliance will also be undertaken. In this regard, it is important to note that these measures are not set in stone and other initiatives may be considered as part of the Textile Strategy. We will only know after the release of the Strategy which is scheduled to be launched in March 2022.
Designing Sustainable Textiles
Another critical policy measure for textiles is the Sustainable Product Initiative (SPI). While this policy is horizontal, meaning that it will apply to other sectors as well, it will introduce significant changes to the way textile products are being designed. The SPI aims to contribute to keeping climate and environmental impacts linked to resource and energy use, production, and use of products within planetary boundaries. One of its intentions is to expand the Ecodesign Directive to be applied to other sectors. It is still not clear if the textiles sector will fall under the expansion or if other instruments regulating the design of products in our sector will be created. This will be known after theProposal for SPI is published in Q1 2022.
Overall, the SPI will introduce substantial changes in terms of product design, production processes, and consumers' rights. The legislation could set minimum or maximum thresholds on certain variables involving durability, recyclability, repairability, and reusability of a product, e.g.,setting a minimum recycled content (per product, product category, product portfolio). The SPI may also set other sustainability principles and specific requirements linked to environmental and, potentially social aspects. Another important development that may come as part of this initiative is the creation of a digital product passport. The passport would be used to as a one-stop shop to communicate environmental and potentially social information to market actors along the value chain. The digital product passport may also be used to communicate certain environmental information to the consumers.
In addition, the SPI may establish EU rules to make producers responsible for providing more circular products, e.g., providing products as a service or providing repair. Requirements on mandatory sustainability labelling may also be established, including mandatory minimum sustainability requirements on public procurement. Lastly, we can also expect measures to facilitate recycled content or remanufacturing, track the use of hazardous substances in production processes, and the introduction of a ban on the destruction of unsold durable goods. All of these measures ought to promote sustainable products in European Markets.
A call for more transparency
Transparency is one of the other topics high on the EU’s agenda. In the coming months, we expect two key policies to impact the way information is communicated to consumers: Substantiating the Green Claims Initiative and the Empowering the Consumers in Green Transition Initiative. Just like in the case of SPI, the two initiatives are horizontal and will affect other sectors as well.
Policies on transparency aim at tackling greenwashing and will address the issue of proliferation of methodologies and green labels. They will ensure that consumers obtain reliable and relevant information on products, e.g., on their lifespan and repair options. In this regard, the EU plans to set minimum requirements for sustainability logos and labels.
The two initiatives will address different aspects of transparency. The Green Claims initiative may require companies to substantiate any impact-related claims on their products/services by using a standard method for quantifying them. With this, the European Commission aims at setting one common EU-level methodology for assessing the green claims.If the common method is imposed, then the market-based mechanisms for measuring the environmental impact of a product would potentially have to be aligned with the common methodology. It is very likely that the current EU's product environmental footprint (PEF) methodology will be selected as the basis. Currently, the PEF covers 16 impact categories including climate change, resource use, minerals and metals, freshwaters, human toxicity, etc. Claims that will not fall under the 16 categories, will be addressed by the Empowering the Consumers Initiative, which is more general.
The Empowering the Consumers Initiative may require companies to specify in more detail the information on products’ sustainability (e.g., environmental characteristics, durability, and reparability) to be provided to consumers as part of the material information at the point of sale. This could involve laying down further requirements to make the information accurate, e.g., establishing criteria to ensure the transparency and reliability of labels/logos or online IT tools. The Initiative could also define and prohibit greenwashing and early product failure. It could also regulate the use of misleading words such as ‘sustainable, ethical, green, etc.,’ which could be prohibited in the future unless properly substantiated information is provided.
Overall, the two initiatives will not only protect the consumers against misleading information but will also enable the companies to make comparable claims against a standard methodology.
Less waste and more resources
Textiles waste became an important topic on the EU’s policy agenda after the revision of the Waste Framework Directive in 2018, which introduced an obligation for the EU Member States to separately collect textiles waste by 2025. This left national and EU policy makers to wonder what to do with the textiles waste and how to reuse, recycle or treat it. One of the proposed solutions was to use the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) scheme. In this regard, the EU Commission has promised to publish its Guidelines on EPR for textiles next year. While the EPR Guidelines will not be binding, they will provide more guidance to the EU Member States as to how to regulate their national EPRs. At the same time, several EU Member States, such as the Netherlands, Sweden, Spain, Italy, and Greece are working on introducing national EPR schemes for textiles, whereas France’s EPR scheme is already on the market for 10 years paving the way for others.
Besides this, the EU will again revise the Waste Framework Directive in the coming years, which may lead to new requirements for the Member States and will subsequently affect the textiles business. In the current planning, the Commission foresees measures to reduce waste generation through re-use of products or components. It will also establish obligations for reducing mixed waste and increasing preparation for re-use or recycling of waste.
Another initiative that may impact textiles is the Revision of Waste Shipment Regulation, scheduled to take place in late 2021. The purpose of the review is to facilitate recycling in the EU and to make more stringent the provisions on shipment to third countries. Among the other things, we can expect measures to restrict exports of waste that have harmful environmental and health impacts in third countries. For the textiles industry, the revised regulation may place a ban on certain types of textiles waste to be exported to third countries.
The Commission will also undertake various incentives to boost textile recycling infrastructure and the secondary raw material market, e.g., end of waste criteria for certain types of textiles may be created in the coming years.
More accountability in the supply chains
Finally, the EU will launch the Sustainable Corporate Governance Initiative to address traceability and social issues in the textile supply chain. The Initiative aims at helping companies to better manage sustainability-related matters in their operations and value chains.
The Sustainable Corporate Governance Initiative is expected to introduce mandatory due diligence for companies covering both social and environmental aspects. It may also expand the director’s duty of care which would include sustainability considerations and stakeholders’ interests. While the precise requirements will only be known after the publication of the Proposal (scheduled to be launched in December this year),companies may expect civil liability to be imposed for misconduct in the supply chains or non-compliance.
This legislation will most likely be applied horizontally and across different sectors. There is also a chance that sector-specific guidelines on due diligence will be developed for the textiles industry.
In a nutshell
Global action is needed more than ever to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement and stay in line with our planet’s resources, and textiles sector must play its role.The upcoming EU policies impacting our sector will be a key change driver stimulating the creation of more circular and sustainable products. The Policy Hub – Circularity for Apparel and Footwear works hard to make sure that these policies create a real change and provide an even level playing field for the textiles industry. Learn more about our work at www.policyhub.org
[1] See Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s definition of the circular economy.
[2]The Circular Economy Action Plan is a non-binding document that introduces legislative and non-legislative measures that the EU Commission will undertake in the upcoming years to accelerate circularity in the EU.
Introduction
COP26 has just ended, and we all watched the world leaders setting their commitments for climate action for the upcoming years and decades. Whilst many of the countries are still struggling to set actionable plans on how to reduce their climate impact, the EU has laid the pathway for sustainability action for others to follow.
A couple of years ago, the EU made a remarkable commitment to become climate neutral by 2050 with the announcement of the European Green Deal. The Deal plays an important role in tackling global challenges, such as climate change and environmental degradation. It also sets an ambition for the EU to transition to a circular economy, where waste is eliminated, resources are circulated, and nature is regenerated.[1]With this in mind, last year the EU put forward its Circular Economy ActionPlan (CEAP)[2],which lays the foundations on how to make EU circular. The Plan highlights sectors where most of the transformation needs to happen, and the textiles industry is one of them. It also mentions some of the key policies that will be introduced in the coming months which will significantly impact our sector: EU Textile Strategy, Sustainable Product Initiative, Substantiating Green Claims Initiative, Empowering Consumers in Green Transition Initiative, and policies on waste. So let’s take a closer look into these upcoming initiatives and the change they will bring.
Laying the Bricks for a Sustainable Apparel and Footwear Sector
In 2022, the EU will be introducing the Sustainable Textile Strategy, which is an overarching framework laying the policy foundations for the future. As the title suggests, the Strategy aims to make the industry more sustainable by creating conditions and incentives to boost the competitiveness, sustainability, and resilience of the EU textile sector. While the Strategy will not be binding for companies, it will introduce the measures which may result in mandatory legislation. So what is in the pipeline?
The Textiles Strategy will provide a holistic set of initiatives tackling various environmental issues across the entire supply chain and the life cycle of a product:
· Product design – The Strategy will underline possible approaches for improving design for sustainability such as ensuring the uptake of secondary raw materials and tackling the presence of hazardous chemicals.
· Production – It will present actions to address weaknesses in sustainable production, e.g., address the presence of substances of concern.
· Consumption– Incentives for ‘product as service’ and other sustainable business models will be presented. The Strategy will also reinforce human rights and due diligence across the value chains, improving traceability and transparency.
· End-use – The Textile Strategy will set up targets to significantly step-up reuse and recycling efforts in the EU, improving textile waste collection and recycling in the Member States as well as capacity building. It will also look into the role of EPR in promoting sustainable textiles and the treatment of textile waste in line with the waste hierarchy.
Other measures such as setting targets for Green Procurement and steering international cooperation and partnerships towards more sustainable consumption and production patterns, e.g., creating a Global Textile Alliance will also be undertaken. In this regard, it is important to note that these measures are not set in stone and other initiatives may be considered as part of the Textile Strategy. We will only know after the release of the Strategy which is scheduled to be launched in March 2022.
Designing Sustainable Textiles
Another critical policy measure for textiles is the Sustainable Product Initiative (SPI). While this policy is horizontal, meaning that it will apply to other sectors as well, it will introduce significant changes to the way textile products are being designed. The SPI aims to contribute to keeping climate and environmental impacts linked to resource and energy use, production, and use of products within planetary boundaries. One of its intentions is to expand the Ecodesign Directive to be applied to other sectors. It is still not clear if the textiles sector will fall under the expansion or if other instruments regulating the design of products in our sector will be created. This will be known after theProposal for SPI is published in Q1 2022.
Overall, the SPI will introduce substantial changes in terms of product design, production processes, and consumers' rights. The legislation could set minimum or maximum thresholds on certain variables involving durability, recyclability, repairability, and reusability of a product, e.g.,setting a minimum recycled content (per product, product category, product portfolio). The SPI may also set other sustainability principles and specific requirements linked to environmental and, potentially social aspects. Another important development that may come as part of this initiative is the creation of a digital product passport. The passport would be used to as a one-stop shop to communicate environmental and potentially social information to market actors along the value chain. The digital product passport may also be used to communicate certain environmental information to the consumers.
In addition, the SPI may establish EU rules to make producers responsible for providing more circular products, e.g., providing products as a service or providing repair. Requirements on mandatory sustainability labelling may also be established, including mandatory minimum sustainability requirements on public procurement. Lastly, we can also expect measures to facilitate recycled content or remanufacturing, track the use of hazardous substances in production processes, and the introduction of a ban on the destruction of unsold durable goods. All of these measures ought to promote sustainable products in European Markets.
A call for more transparency
Transparency is one of the other topics high on the EU’s agenda. In the coming months, we expect two key policies to impact the way information is communicated to consumers: Substantiating the Green Claims Initiative and the Empowering the Consumers in Green Transition Initiative. Just like in the case of SPI, the two initiatives are horizontal and will affect other sectors as well.
Policies on transparency aim at tackling greenwashing and will address the issue of proliferation of methodologies and green labels. They will ensure that consumers obtain reliable and relevant information on products, e.g., on their lifespan and repair options. In this regard, the EU plans to set minimum requirements for sustainability logos and labels.
The two initiatives will address different aspects of transparency. The Green Claims initiative may require companies to substantiate any impact-related claims on their products/services by using a standard method for quantifying them. With this, the European Commission aims at setting one common EU-level methodology for assessing the green claims.If the common method is imposed, then the market-based mechanisms for measuring the environmental impact of a product would potentially have to be aligned with the common methodology. It is very likely that the current EU's product environmental footprint (PEF) methodology will be selected as the basis. Currently, the PEF covers 16 impact categories including climate change, resource use, minerals and metals, freshwaters, human toxicity, etc. Claims that will not fall under the 16 categories, will be addressed by the Empowering the Consumers Initiative, which is more general.
The Empowering the Consumers Initiative may require companies to specify in more detail the information on products’ sustainability (e.g., environmental characteristics, durability, and reparability) to be provided to consumers as part of the material information at the point of sale. This could involve laying down further requirements to make the information accurate, e.g., establishing criteria to ensure the transparency and reliability of labels/logos or online IT tools. The Initiative could also define and prohibit greenwashing and early product failure. It could also regulate the use of misleading words such as ‘sustainable, ethical, green, etc.,’ which could be prohibited in the future unless properly substantiated information is provided.
Overall, the two initiatives will not only protect the consumers against misleading information but will also enable the companies to make comparable claims against a standard methodology.
Less waste and more resources
Textiles waste became an important topic on the EU’s policy agenda after the revision of the Waste Framework Directive in 2018, which introduced an obligation for the EU Member States to separately collect textiles waste by 2025. This left national and EU policy makers to wonder what to do with the textiles waste and how to reuse, recycle or treat it. One of the proposed solutions was to use the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) scheme. In this regard, the EU Commission has promised to publish its Guidelines on EPR for textiles next year. While the EPR Guidelines will not be binding, they will provide more guidance to the EU Member States as to how to regulate their national EPRs. At the same time, several EU Member States, such as the Netherlands, Sweden, Spain, Italy, and Greece are working on introducing national EPR schemes for textiles, whereas France’s EPR scheme is already on the market for 10 years paving the way for others.
Besides this, the EU will again revise the Waste Framework Directive in the coming years, which may lead to new requirements for the Member States and will subsequently affect the textiles business. In the current planning, the Commission foresees measures to reduce waste generation through re-use of products or components. It will also establish obligations for reducing mixed waste and increasing preparation for re-use or recycling of waste.
Another initiative that may impact textiles is the Revision of Waste Shipment Regulation, scheduled to take place in late 2021. The purpose of the review is to facilitate recycling in the EU and to make more stringent the provisions on shipment to third countries. Among the other things, we can expect measures to restrict exports of waste that have harmful environmental and health impacts in third countries. For the textiles industry, the revised regulation may place a ban on certain types of textiles waste to be exported to third countries.
The Commission will also undertake various incentives to boost textile recycling infrastructure and the secondary raw material market, e.g., end of waste criteria for certain types of textiles may be created in the coming years.
More accountability in the supply chains
Finally, the EU will launch the Sustainable Corporate Governance Initiative to address traceability and social issues in the textile supply chain. The Initiative aims at helping companies to better manage sustainability-related matters in their operations and value chains.
The Sustainable Corporate Governance Initiative is expected to introduce mandatory due diligence for companies covering both social and environmental aspects. It may also expand the director’s duty of care which would include sustainability considerations and stakeholders’ interests. While the precise requirements will only be known after the publication of the Proposal (scheduled to be launched in December this year),companies may expect civil liability to be imposed for misconduct in the supply chains or non-compliance.
This legislation will most likely be applied horizontally and across different sectors. There is also a chance that sector-specific guidelines on due diligence will be developed for the textiles industry.
In a nutshell
Global action is needed more than ever to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement and stay in line with our planet’s resources, and textiles sector must play its role.The upcoming EU policies impacting our sector will be a key change driver stimulating the creation of more circular and sustainable products. The Policy Hub – Circularity for Apparel and Footwear works hard to make sure that these policies create a real change and provide an even level playing field for the textiles industry. Learn more about our work at www.policyhub.org
[1] See Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s definition of the circular economy.
[2]The Circular Economy Action Plan is a non-binding document that introduces legislative and non-legislative measures that the EU Commission will undertake in the upcoming years to accelerate circularity in the EU.
Introduction
COP26 has just ended, and we all watched the world leaders setting their commitments for climate action for the upcoming years and decades. Whilst many of the countries are still struggling to set actionable plans on how to reduce their climate impact, the EU has laid the pathway for sustainability action for others to follow.
A couple of years ago, the EU made a remarkable commitment to become climate neutral by 2050 with the announcement of the European Green Deal. The Deal plays an important role in tackling global challenges, such as climate change and environmental degradation. It also sets an ambition for the EU to transition to a circular economy, where waste is eliminated, resources are circulated, and nature is regenerated.[1]With this in mind, last year the EU put forward its Circular Economy ActionPlan (CEAP)[2],which lays the foundations on how to make EU circular. The Plan highlights sectors where most of the transformation needs to happen, and the textiles industry is one of them. It also mentions some of the key policies that will be introduced in the coming months which will significantly impact our sector: EU Textile Strategy, Sustainable Product Initiative, Substantiating Green Claims Initiative, Empowering Consumers in Green Transition Initiative, and policies on waste. So let’s take a closer look into these upcoming initiatives and the change they will bring.
Laying the Bricks for a Sustainable Apparel and Footwear Sector
In 2022, the EU will be introducing the Sustainable Textile Strategy, which is an overarching framework laying the policy foundations for the future. As the title suggests, the Strategy aims to make the industry more sustainable by creating conditions and incentives to boost the competitiveness, sustainability, and resilience of the EU textile sector. While the Strategy will not be binding for companies, it will introduce the measures which may result in mandatory legislation. So what is in the pipeline?
The Textiles Strategy will provide a holistic set of initiatives tackling various environmental issues across the entire supply chain and the life cycle of a product:
· Product design – The Strategy will underline possible approaches for improving design for sustainability such as ensuring the uptake of secondary raw materials and tackling the presence of hazardous chemicals.
· Production – It will present actions to address weaknesses in sustainable production, e.g., address the presence of substances of concern.
· Consumption– Incentives for ‘product as service’ and other sustainable business models will be presented. The Strategy will also reinforce human rights and due diligence across the value chains, improving traceability and transparency.
· End-use – The Textile Strategy will set up targets to significantly step-up reuse and recycling efforts in the EU, improving textile waste collection and recycling in the Member States as well as capacity building. It will also look into the role of EPR in promoting sustainable textiles and the treatment of textile waste in line with the waste hierarchy.
Other measures such as setting targets for Green Procurement and steering international cooperation and partnerships towards more sustainable consumption and production patterns, e.g., creating a Global Textile Alliance will also be undertaken. In this regard, it is important to note that these measures are not set in stone and other initiatives may be considered as part of the Textile Strategy. We will only know after the release of the Strategy which is scheduled to be launched in March 2022.
Designing Sustainable Textiles
Another critical policy measure for textiles is the Sustainable Product Initiative (SPI). While this policy is horizontal, meaning that it will apply to other sectors as well, it will introduce significant changes to the way textile products are being designed. The SPI aims to contribute to keeping climate and environmental impacts linked to resource and energy use, production, and use of products within planetary boundaries. One of its intentions is to expand the Ecodesign Directive to be applied to other sectors. It is still not clear if the textiles sector will fall under the expansion or if other instruments regulating the design of products in our sector will be created. This will be known after theProposal for SPI is published in Q1 2022.
Overall, the SPI will introduce substantial changes in terms of product design, production processes, and consumers' rights. The legislation could set minimum or maximum thresholds on certain variables involving durability, recyclability, repairability, and reusability of a product, e.g.,setting a minimum recycled content (per product, product category, product portfolio). The SPI may also set other sustainability principles and specific requirements linked to environmental and, potentially social aspects. Another important development that may come as part of this initiative is the creation of a digital product passport. The passport would be used to as a one-stop shop to communicate environmental and potentially social information to market actors along the value chain. The digital product passport may also be used to communicate certain environmental information to the consumers.
In addition, the SPI may establish EU rules to make producers responsible for providing more circular products, e.g., providing products as a service or providing repair. Requirements on mandatory sustainability labelling may also be established, including mandatory minimum sustainability requirements on public procurement. Lastly, we can also expect measures to facilitate recycled content or remanufacturing, track the use of hazardous substances in production processes, and the introduction of a ban on the destruction of unsold durable goods. All of these measures ought to promote sustainable products in European Markets.
A call for more transparency
Transparency is one of the other topics high on the EU’s agenda. In the coming months, we expect two key policies to impact the way information is communicated to consumers: Substantiating the Green Claims Initiative and the Empowering the Consumers in Green Transition Initiative. Just like in the case of SPI, the two initiatives are horizontal and will affect other sectors as well.
Policies on transparency aim at tackling greenwashing and will address the issue of proliferation of methodologies and green labels. They will ensure that consumers obtain reliable and relevant information on products, e.g., on their lifespan and repair options. In this regard, the EU plans to set minimum requirements for sustainability logos and labels.
The two initiatives will address different aspects of transparency. The Green Claims initiative may require companies to substantiate any impact-related claims on their products/services by using a standard method for quantifying them. With this, the European Commission aims at setting one common EU-level methodology for assessing the green claims.If the common method is imposed, then the market-based mechanisms for measuring the environmental impact of a product would potentially have to be aligned with the common methodology. It is very likely that the current EU's product environmental footprint (PEF) methodology will be selected as the basis. Currently, the PEF covers 16 impact categories including climate change, resource use, minerals and metals, freshwaters, human toxicity, etc. Claims that will not fall under the 16 categories, will be addressed by the Empowering the Consumers Initiative, which is more general.
The Empowering the Consumers Initiative may require companies to specify in more detail the information on products’ sustainability (e.g., environmental characteristics, durability, and reparability) to be provided to consumers as part of the material information at the point of sale. This could involve laying down further requirements to make the information accurate, e.g., establishing criteria to ensure the transparency and reliability of labels/logos or online IT tools. The Initiative could also define and prohibit greenwashing and early product failure. It could also regulate the use of misleading words such as ‘sustainable, ethical, green, etc.,’ which could be prohibited in the future unless properly substantiated information is provided.
Overall, the two initiatives will not only protect the consumers against misleading information but will also enable the companies to make comparable claims against a standard methodology.
Less waste and more resources
Textiles waste became an important topic on the EU’s policy agenda after the revision of the Waste Framework Directive in 2018, which introduced an obligation for the EU Member States to separately collect textiles waste by 2025. This left national and EU policy makers to wonder what to do with the textiles waste and how to reuse, recycle or treat it. One of the proposed solutions was to use the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) scheme. In this regard, the EU Commission has promised to publish its Guidelines on EPR for textiles next year. While the EPR Guidelines will not be binding, they will provide more guidance to the EU Member States as to how to regulate their national EPRs. At the same time, several EU Member States, such as the Netherlands, Sweden, Spain, Italy, and Greece are working on introducing national EPR schemes for textiles, whereas France’s EPR scheme is already on the market for 10 years paving the way for others.
Besides this, the EU will again revise the Waste Framework Directive in the coming years, which may lead to new requirements for the Member States and will subsequently affect the textiles business. In the current planning, the Commission foresees measures to reduce waste generation through re-use of products or components. It will also establish obligations for reducing mixed waste and increasing preparation for re-use or recycling of waste.
Another initiative that may impact textiles is the Revision of Waste Shipment Regulation, scheduled to take place in late 2021. The purpose of the review is to facilitate recycling in the EU and to make more stringent the provisions on shipment to third countries. Among the other things, we can expect measures to restrict exports of waste that have harmful environmental and health impacts in third countries. For the textiles industry, the revised regulation may place a ban on certain types of textiles waste to be exported to third countries.
The Commission will also undertake various incentives to boost textile recycling infrastructure and the secondary raw material market, e.g., end of waste criteria for certain types of textiles may be created in the coming years.
More accountability in the supply chains
Finally, the EU will launch the Sustainable Corporate Governance Initiative to address traceability and social issues in the textile supply chain. The Initiative aims at helping companies to better manage sustainability-related matters in their operations and value chains.
The Sustainable Corporate Governance Initiative is expected to introduce mandatory due diligence for companies covering both social and environmental aspects. It may also expand the director’s duty of care which would include sustainability considerations and stakeholders’ interests. While the precise requirements will only be known after the publication of the Proposal (scheduled to be launched in December this year),companies may expect civil liability to be imposed for misconduct in the supply chains or non-compliance.
This legislation will most likely be applied horizontally and across different sectors. There is also a chance that sector-specific guidelines on due diligence will be developed for the textiles industry.
In a nutshell
Global action is needed more than ever to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement and stay in line with our planet’s resources, and textiles sector must play its role.The upcoming EU policies impacting our sector will be a key change driver stimulating the creation of more circular and sustainable products. The Policy Hub – Circularity for Apparel and Footwear works hard to make sure that these policies create a real change and provide an even level playing field for the textiles industry. Learn more about our work at www.policyhub.org
[1] See Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s definition of the circular economy.
[2]The Circular Economy Action Plan is a non-binding document that introduces legislative and non-legislative measures that the EU Commission will undertake in the upcoming years to accelerate circularity in the EU.
Introduction
COP26 has just ended, and we all watched the world leaders setting their commitments for climate action for the upcoming years and decades. Whilst many of the countries are still struggling to set actionable plans on how to reduce their climate impact, the EU has laid the pathway for sustainability action for others to follow.
A couple of years ago, the EU made a remarkable commitment to become climate neutral by 2050 with the announcement of the European Green Deal. The Deal plays an important role in tackling global challenges, such as climate change and environmental degradation. It also sets an ambition for the EU to transition to a circular economy, where waste is eliminated, resources are circulated, and nature is regenerated.[1]With this in mind, last year the EU put forward its Circular Economy ActionPlan (CEAP)[2],which lays the foundations on how to make EU circular. The Plan highlights sectors where most of the transformation needs to happen, and the textiles industry is one of them. It also mentions some of the key policies that will be introduced in the coming months which will significantly impact our sector: EU Textile Strategy, Sustainable Product Initiative, Substantiating Green Claims Initiative, Empowering Consumers in Green Transition Initiative, and policies on waste. So let’s take a closer look into these upcoming initiatives and the change they will bring.
Laying the Bricks for a Sustainable Apparel and Footwear Sector
In 2022, the EU will be introducing the Sustainable Textile Strategy, which is an overarching framework laying the policy foundations for the future. As the title suggests, the Strategy aims to make the industry more sustainable by creating conditions and incentives to boost the competitiveness, sustainability, and resilience of the EU textile sector. While the Strategy will not be binding for companies, it will introduce the measures which may result in mandatory legislation. So what is in the pipeline?
The Textiles Strategy will provide a holistic set of initiatives tackling various environmental issues across the entire supply chain and the life cycle of a product:
· Product design – The Strategy will underline possible approaches for improving design for sustainability such as ensuring the uptake of secondary raw materials and tackling the presence of hazardous chemicals.
· Production – It will present actions to address weaknesses in sustainable production, e.g., address the presence of substances of concern.
· Consumption– Incentives for ‘product as service’ and other sustainable business models will be presented. The Strategy will also reinforce human rights and due diligence across the value chains, improving traceability and transparency.
· End-use – The Textile Strategy will set up targets to significantly step-up reuse and recycling efforts in the EU, improving textile waste collection and recycling in the Member States as well as capacity building. It will also look into the role of EPR in promoting sustainable textiles and the treatment of textile waste in line with the waste hierarchy.
Other measures such as setting targets for Green Procurement and steering international cooperation and partnerships towards more sustainable consumption and production patterns, e.g., creating a Global Textile Alliance will also be undertaken. In this regard, it is important to note that these measures are not set in stone and other initiatives may be considered as part of the Textile Strategy. We will only know after the release of the Strategy which is scheduled to be launched in March 2022.
Designing Sustainable Textiles
Another critical policy measure for textiles is the Sustainable Product Initiative (SPI). While this policy is horizontal, meaning that it will apply to other sectors as well, it will introduce significant changes to the way textile products are being designed. The SPI aims to contribute to keeping climate and environmental impacts linked to resource and energy use, production, and use of products within planetary boundaries. One of its intentions is to expand the Ecodesign Directive to be applied to other sectors. It is still not clear if the textiles sector will fall under the expansion or if other instruments regulating the design of products in our sector will be created. This will be known after theProposal for SPI is published in Q1 2022.
Overall, the SPI will introduce substantial changes in terms of product design, production processes, and consumers' rights. The legislation could set minimum or maximum thresholds on certain variables involving durability, recyclability, repairability, and reusability of a product, e.g.,setting a minimum recycled content (per product, product category, product portfolio). The SPI may also set other sustainability principles and specific requirements linked to environmental and, potentially social aspects. Another important development that may come as part of this initiative is the creation of a digital product passport. The passport would be used to as a one-stop shop to communicate environmental and potentially social information to market actors along the value chain. The digital product passport may also be used to communicate certain environmental information to the consumers.
In addition, the SPI may establish EU rules to make producers responsible for providing more circular products, e.g., providing products as a service or providing repair. Requirements on mandatory sustainability labelling may also be established, including mandatory minimum sustainability requirements on public procurement. Lastly, we can also expect measures to facilitate recycled content or remanufacturing, track the use of hazardous substances in production processes, and the introduction of a ban on the destruction of unsold durable goods. All of these measures ought to promote sustainable products in European Markets.
A call for more transparency
Transparency is one of the other topics high on the EU’s agenda. In the coming months, we expect two key policies to impact the way information is communicated to consumers: Substantiating the Green Claims Initiative and the Empowering the Consumers in Green Transition Initiative. Just like in the case of SPI, the two initiatives are horizontal and will affect other sectors as well.
Policies on transparency aim at tackling greenwashing and will address the issue of proliferation of methodologies and green labels. They will ensure that consumers obtain reliable and relevant information on products, e.g., on their lifespan and repair options. In this regard, the EU plans to set minimum requirements for sustainability logos and labels.
The two initiatives will address different aspects of transparency. The Green Claims initiative may require companies to substantiate any impact-related claims on their products/services by using a standard method for quantifying them. With this, the European Commission aims at setting one common EU-level methodology for assessing the green claims.If the common method is imposed, then the market-based mechanisms for measuring the environmental impact of a product would potentially have to be aligned with the common methodology. It is very likely that the current EU's product environmental footprint (PEF) methodology will be selected as the basis. Currently, the PEF covers 16 impact categories including climate change, resource use, minerals and metals, freshwaters, human toxicity, etc. Claims that will not fall under the 16 categories, will be addressed by the Empowering the Consumers Initiative, which is more general.
The Empowering the Consumers Initiative may require companies to specify in more detail the information on products’ sustainability (e.g., environmental characteristics, durability, and reparability) to be provided to consumers as part of the material information at the point of sale. This could involve laying down further requirements to make the information accurate, e.g., establishing criteria to ensure the transparency and reliability of labels/logos or online IT tools. The Initiative could also define and prohibit greenwashing and early product failure. It could also regulate the use of misleading words such as ‘sustainable, ethical, green, etc.,’ which could be prohibited in the future unless properly substantiated information is provided.
Overall, the two initiatives will not only protect the consumers against misleading information but will also enable the companies to make comparable claims against a standard methodology.
Less waste and more resources
Textiles waste became an important topic on the EU’s policy agenda after the revision of the Waste Framework Directive in 2018, which introduced an obligation for the EU Member States to separately collect textiles waste by 2025. This left national and EU policy makers to wonder what to do with the textiles waste and how to reuse, recycle or treat it. One of the proposed solutions was to use the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) scheme. In this regard, the EU Commission has promised to publish its Guidelines on EPR for textiles next year. While the EPR Guidelines will not be binding, they will provide more guidance to the EU Member States as to how to regulate their national EPRs. At the same time, several EU Member States, such as the Netherlands, Sweden, Spain, Italy, and Greece are working on introducing national EPR schemes for textiles, whereas France’s EPR scheme is already on the market for 10 years paving the way for others.
Besides this, the EU will again revise the Waste Framework Directive in the coming years, which may lead to new requirements for the Member States and will subsequently affect the textiles business. In the current planning, the Commission foresees measures to reduce waste generation through re-use of products or components. It will also establish obligations for reducing mixed waste and increasing preparation for re-use or recycling of waste.
Another initiative that may impact textiles is the Revision of Waste Shipment Regulation, scheduled to take place in late 2021. The purpose of the review is to facilitate recycling in the EU and to make more stringent the provisions on shipment to third countries. Among the other things, we can expect measures to restrict exports of waste that have harmful environmental and health impacts in third countries. For the textiles industry, the revised regulation may place a ban on certain types of textiles waste to be exported to third countries.
The Commission will also undertake various incentives to boost textile recycling infrastructure and the secondary raw material market, e.g., end of waste criteria for certain types of textiles may be created in the coming years.
More accountability in the supply chains
Finally, the EU will launch the Sustainable Corporate Governance Initiative to address traceability and social issues in the textile supply chain. The Initiative aims at helping companies to better manage sustainability-related matters in their operations and value chains.
The Sustainable Corporate Governance Initiative is expected to introduce mandatory due diligence for companies covering both social and environmental aspects. It may also expand the director’s duty of care which would include sustainability considerations and stakeholders’ interests. While the precise requirements will only be known after the publication of the Proposal (scheduled to be launched in December this year),companies may expect civil liability to be imposed for misconduct in the supply chains or non-compliance.
This legislation will most likely be applied horizontally and across different sectors. There is also a chance that sector-specific guidelines on due diligence will be developed for the textiles industry.
In a nutshell
Global action is needed more than ever to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement and stay in line with our planet’s resources, and textiles sector must play its role.The upcoming EU policies impacting our sector will be a key change driver stimulating the creation of more circular and sustainable products. The Policy Hub – Circularity for Apparel and Footwear works hard to make sure that these policies create a real change and provide an even level playing field for the textiles industry. Learn more about our work at www.policyhub.org
[1] See Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s definition of the circular economy.
[2]The Circular Economy Action Plan is a non-binding document that introduces legislative and non-legislative measures that the EU Commission will undertake in the upcoming years to accelerate circularity in the EU.
