Institutional support towards fashion sustainability

1. EU strategy for sustainable and circular textiles

The global movement towards sustainability described in the first section is now to be declined at the industrial and sector levels. The European Union recognises the Textile industry (including clothing and fashion, but also furniture, medical equipment, vehicles, etc.) as having the fourth highest impact on the environment and climate change, after food, housing and mobility. Also, this institution recently launched an EU strategy for sustainable and circular textiles[1]

With this strategy, The European Commission is working on a Transition Pathway for the textile ecosystem to successfully achieve green and digital transitions and for the ecosystem to become more resilient. This is intended to be a co-creation process, in which stakeholders are invited – through a survey and workshops – to propose specific actions and work towards these common objectives.

This strategy is summarized as follows:

The European Commission’s 2030 Vision for Textiles is:

• All textile products placed on the EU market are:
• durable, repairable and recyclable
• to a great extent made of recycled fibres
• free of hazardous substances
• produced respecting social rights
• “Fast fashion is out of fashion” – consumers benefit longer from high-quality textiles
• Profitable re-use and repair services are widely available
• In a competitive, resilient and innovative textile sector producers take responsibility for their products along the value chain
• Circular rather than throw-away clothes have become the norm, with sufficient capacities for recycling and minimal incineration and landfilling

Source: Image by pikisuperstar on Freepik

Also, the following key actions are declared:

• Set design requirements for textiles to make them last longer, and easier to repair and recycle, as well as requirements on minimum recycled content
• Introduce clearer information and a Digital Product Passport
• Tackle greenwashing to empower consumers and raise awareness about sustainable fashion
• Reverse overproduction and overconsumption, and discourage the destruction of unsold or returned textiles
• Propose mandatory Extended Producer Responsibility for textiles with eco-modulation of fees
• Address the unintentional release of microplastics from synthetic textiles
• Restrict the export of textile waste and promote sustainable textiles globally
• Incentivise circular business models, including reuse and repair sectors
• Encourage companies and the Member States to support the objectives of the Strategy

This strategy was officially launched in March 2022 and set objectives for the 2030 horizon. Thus, this TECOFASH course is taking place at a key moment of the development of strategic actions and policies in the field of sustainable fashion. The objective clearly is to move towards sustainable business practices.

2. Corporate sustainability reporting

We saw in the prior section that sustainable policies have a low level of coercion in Europe. However, this is slowly starting to change, and since 2014, large size companies must submit to a binding European regulation in this field, with the corporate sustainability reporting. If this regulation does not force companies towards sustainable action, it thus commits them to increased transparency over their non-financial business practices.

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The Directive 2014/95/EU – also called the Non-Financial Reporting Directive (NFRD) – lays down the rules on the disclosure of non-financial and diversity information by certain large companies. This directive applies to large public-interest companies with more than 500 employees (about 11700 companies and groups across the EU). According to this directive, companies are now obliged to publish information related to:

3. environmental matters,
4. social matters and treatment of employees,
5. respect for human rights,
6. anti-corruption and bribery,
7. diversity on company boards (in terms of age, gender, educational and professional background)

Then, in April 2021, the commission adopted a proposal for a Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), which would amend the existing NFRD and extend its scope.

From 2024, the CSRD directive will become mandatory for all companies having more than 250 employees, a net turnover of over 40 million euros, or total assets of at least 20 million euros.

This law has the advantage of committing companies to higher transparency on their business models, especially on non-financial topics such as sustainability. However, it does not solve everything. According to the European Reporting Lab report on current non financial reporting format and practices (2021) for instance, only 30% of apparel and textiles companies, that mostly rely on outsourced production located in regions with systemic human rights and natural resources abuse, report on these issues from a business model perspective.

Also, the EC envisages the adoption EU sustainability reporting standards for the CSRD.

[1] https://environment.ec.europa.eu/publications/textiles-strategy_en