According to the European Environmental Agency (link), textiles have on average the fourth highest negative life cycle impact on the environment and climate change, after food, housing and mobility, The yearly quantity of textile wastes generated in the EU amounts to approximately 7 million tons. The graph below (source EEA) present the estimated annual consumption (production + import – export) of of clothing, footwear and household textiles per inhabitant in the EU.
The environmental and climate impacts are manifolds: material use, water consumption, microplastics CO2 emissions. A global perspective must ne developed as 80% of environment impacts generated by Europe’s textile consumption takes place outside Europe. It is not only an environmental issue but also an economic issue (in 2019, the EU textile and clothing sector had a turnover of EUR162 billion, employing over 1.5 million people across 160,000 companies) and social issue (second-hand garment is a cheap option for people with low incomes while manufacturing condition in countries out of the EU are generally below decent standards),
In March 2022, the European Commission released the EU Strategy for Sustainable and Circular textile COM(2022) 141, which aims to implement a consistent approach all across the value chain, As illustrated by the chart below, it relies on 3 main instruments that have proved to be efficient in other contexts: consumer information (eco-labelling, digital passport, etc.), the IPPC directive (Best Available technologies) and an Extended Producer Responsibility to be introduced by 2025 (approved recycling schemes, recovery targets). This might be completed by other measures such as:
- Reverse overproduction and overconsumption, and discourage the destruction of unsold or returned textiles
- Address the unintentional release of microplastics from synthetic textiles
- Tackle greenwashing to empower consumers and raise awareness about sustainable fashion
- Restrict the export of textile waste and promote sustainable textiles globally
- Incentivise circular business models, including reuse and repair sectors
- Support research and demonstration projects to remove current bottlenecks (see for instance the Horizon Europe CISUTAC project aimed at developing new, sustainable and integrated large-scale European value chains)
Main success factors for this action plan are::
- Changing consumer behaviour. Trends to use clothes for shorter and shorter periods before throwing them away contribute the most to unsustainable patterns of overproduction and overconsumption. Such trends have become known as fast fashion, enticing consumers to keep on buying clothing of inferior quality and lower price, produced rapidly in response to the latest trends. A new paradigm of attractive alternatives to fast changing fashion trends is deadly needed. The European Commission will have to engage with stakeholders to facilitate the scaling up of resource-efficient manufacturing processes, reuse, repair and other new circular business models in the textiles sector..
- Post-consumers household wastes should be the main priority for collection system as they represent 85% of the total quantity. Others are post-consumer commercial waste (6 %), pre-consumer waste like unsellable overstock (2 %) and post-industrial waste like production spill (7 %), Today, only 10 percent (0.7 million tons) of consumers’ textiles waste is available to recycling while about a third of post-consumer household waste is collected and a larger share is resold to local or international second-hand markets. This is the reason why the implementation of the EPR is so important, although complementing it could prove complex due to the huge diversity of textile waste..
- The export of reusable textiles out of Europe must be better regulated: Today, the premium quality clothing textiles constitute around 5 % of the total collected volume, and are sold to the Western European markets. The remaining reusable textiles are sold to wholesalers for detailed sorting and are then exported on the global market. LCA results show that this is the most advantageous option for the environment provided that the sorting is properly done, otherwise the non-reusable clothing is exported and ends up in dump sites instead of being recycled in Europe (Norion LCA study commissioned by EurIC)
- The hierarchy of recovery options needs to be further refined between mechanical and chemical processes. Textiles recovery should be dealt with in a cascading approach: Used textiles should first be recycled into yarn used for the production of new garments, repeatedly until the fibres are too short to produce useful yarn. Then, the garment should be mechanically recycled into industry wipes and / or filling. Only when such products are wasted, should the textile be chemically recycled to again produce high-quality yarn. This way the least environmentally harmful process is prioritised as long as possible. (Norion LCA study commissioned by EurIC).
A very effective monitoring and evaluation system will be needed to track the highly complex interactions within the system and to provide appropriate feedback to a wide range of stakeholders, including those outside Europe. The economic benefits will be not negligible. According to McKinsey (link), the implementation of the EU strategy has the potential to create 15,000 jobs by 2030 and an annual overall impact of €3.5-4.5 billion.
Sustainable Synergies 