The European Parliament’s long-awaited final green light for its extended producer responsibility legislation, meant to yoke producers that sell textiles into the European Union with the cost of collecting, sorting, reusing and recycling those materials at the end of their useful life, has been met with mixed reactions.
While critics say that the measures, which are designed to reduce the environmental impact of the fast and ultra-fast fashion industries as part of the broader waste framework directive, have the potential to promote circularity in the 27-member bloc, they also note that a more progressive position was shunned following the rightward shift of the previous election.
Andrea Veselá, textiles officer at the nonprofit Zero Waste Europe, for one, characterizes the rules as “too little, too late.” The 30-month grace period to set up EPR schemes following the law’s entry into force—meaning the final ones could roll out as late as April 2028—also marks what she says is an unnecessary delay. Most collected textiles will likely continue to be incinerated in the interim, she said.
“It can sometimes be easy to overlook the impact of EU decisions for local communities; however, we see that municipalities, as well as sorters, already struggle to meet the separate collection obligation for textiles without further funding from EPR,” Veselá said. “The ultra-fast fashion surge has resulted in an unmanageable amount of waste, detrimental to not only local waste management and reuse efforts. ZWE recommends EU member states swiftly introduce EPR schemes that support prevention and best practices for waste collection, sorting and local reuse.”
The European Commission estimates that some 12.6 million metric tons of textile waste are generated in the world’s largest single market every year, with clothing and footwear alone accounting for 5.2 million metric tons, or the equivalent of 12 kilograms (26 pounds) of waste per person annually. Worldwide, less than 1 percent of this is recycled into new garments.
The rules will apply to all producers, including those using e-commerce tools and regardless of whether they are headquartered within or outside the EU. They will cover clothing and accessories, footwear, hats, blankets, home linens and curtains, with the future possibility of mattresses. Following the law’s publication in the EU official journal, member states will have 20 months following its entry into force to transpose the rules into national legislation.
But the current text remains, for the most part, thin on details, lacking concrete targets, fee structures and other essential provisions, said Peter Majeranowski, CEO of Circ, a Virginia-based textile-to-textile recycler that formed the T2T Alliance with fellow innovators like Circ, Syre and Re&UP Technologies, in March to lobby for European legislation that can help their businesses scale.
“The European Parliament has opened the door; now implementation will decide whether the industry can unlock real value,” he said. “The industry cannot afford more legislative gaps. To avoid a fragmented market, we need EU-wide harmonization of EPR with common scope, eco-modulation and reporting, so the rules create a level playing field across the EU.”
Another thing that’s missing from the final language is the “critical requirement” of global accountability that The Or Foundation, along with “thousands of other people, organizations and brands” have been clamoring for, said Liz Ricketts, the Ghana-based waste-crusading nonprofit’s co-founder and executive director.
“Without global accountability as a core pillar of EPR frameworks for textiles, fashion brands will pay billions of euros into EPR programs that subsidize exports without supporting the global re-use markets like Kantamanto Market, where the heavy lifting of circularity is truly performed, and where resources enabled through EPR are urgently needed,” she said. “This is the definition of waste colonialism.”
Ricketts urges brands and emerging member state producer responsibility organizations, also known as PROs, to voluntarily do what she said regulators at the EU level have failed to do.
“[They need to] make EPR globally accountable by moving a portion of the funds collected under the programs into Kantamanto Market and communities like it [that] are managing the overwhelming majority of the EU’s waste,” she said.
Timing was another grouse for trade and policy groups such as the European Apparel and Textile Confederation, the European Branded Clothing Association, the Federation of the European Sporting Goods Industry and Policy Hub.
While the European Parliament’s vote marks a “decisive step” toward establishing a harmonized framework for EPR for textiles across the EU, they said in a joint statement, the textile recycling value chain “cannot afford a legislative gap lasting many years.”
“We particularly urge the Commission to start harmonisation already in 2025,” the organizations said. “To avoid duplication or confusion, the framework should include a harmonised list of products in scope, a consistent structure for calculating EPR fees and eco-modulation and a standardized reporting template. These measures will send a clear signal to economic operators and enable impact at scale.”
Only evidence-based policymaking, they said, can deliver measures that support sustainability while maintaining competitiveness.
“The European textile ecosystem emphasizes that eco-modulation criteria must be science-based and aligned with eco-design for sustainable product regulation requirements once these are fully implemented,” the groups said. “To avoid delays in driving circularity, we support the introduction of EU-based pragmatic interim criteria in the meantime, which can be refined as eco-design standards are adopted.”
