RREUSE feedback on the consultation for New Product Priorities for Ecodesign for Sustainable Products
RREUSE welcomes the possibility to give feedback on new product priorities under the upcoming Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation. As an organisation that promotes the reuse and repair of products, we believe that mandatory eco-design requirements can play a key role in reducing waste and minimizing the environmental impact of products throughout their life cycle, while also creating major savings for European households.
The recognition of furniture and textiles as the most important priorities for end-use products in the JRC study accompanying the consultation is particularly important for our sector as these are two categories of products with a high reusability potential that can be unlocked through ambitious eco-design legislation, resulting in a positive impact on the environment and significant opportunities for the creation of green and local jobs.
However, it is crucial that ICT products are not excluded from the list of priorities to avoid the risk of a big subset of products not being slipping through the cracks between the old working plan and the new one under the ESPR. This would be an enormous missed opportunity to advance regulation for a key value chain that is seeing a proliferation of completely unregulated products with very limited reparability and durability, which are responsible for negative environmental impacts across their whole lifecycle. Furthermore, the lack of regulation represents an important stumbling block for the future of the EU’s strategic autonomy due to the inefficient resource management of the Critical Raw Materials contained in such products.
Therefore, RREUSE calls on the Commission to prioritise textiles, furniture and ICT products due to their high reusability potential and introduce ambitious mandatory requirements improving durability and reparability of these product categories, involving social enterprises in the consultation process due to their long-lasting expertise in the sector.
What follows is a short overview of why textiles and furniture should be prioritised among non-energy using products, with some suggestions on how durability and reparability for these two products group could be extended through specific requirements.