Joint Statement on Extended Producer Responsibility for Textiles

RREUSE, along with 10 other NGOs and progressive business associations, urges EU lawmakers to incorporate waste prevention and local re-use as guiding principles into future EPR schemes for mandatory textile separate collection. 

This joint statement points out some shortcomings of the proposal and calls for action to ensure the success of the EU-wide Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) for textiles, which has been proposed as part of the revision of the Waste Framework Directive. The measure should not only ensure proper waste management practices but also address the increasing amount of textile waste in Europe from the root cause.

• Introduce waste prevention and waste management performance targets: The proposed EPR scheme for textiles omits setting targets for waste prevention, collection, reuse, and recycling.
• Ensure eco-modulation drives circularity and mitigate overproduction: We propose to introduce a volume criterion in the calculation of the eco-contribution fees and/or the eco-modulation to tackle fast fashion. This fee would be linked to the number of new items placed on the market by a brand each year. 
• Introduce a re-use and repair fund: The proposal states that a wide range of operations including collection, transport, sorting, preparation for reuse, and recycling, would be covered by the EPR fees. In addition, we call to allocate 10% of the EPR fees to reuse and repair operations to make the sector more profitable and create local jobs.

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