This week will witness a new law passed by the European Parliament to forcibly prohibit the destruction of unsold clothing, accessories, or footwear, across the European market finally come into effect.
The aim of the legislation – part of the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR) – is to ensure all products sold in the EU are reusable, repairable, upgradable, and recyclable by 2030.
The Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation will enter into force on Thursday, 18 July 2024, and has previously been described by many as the ‘cornerstone of the European Commission’s approach to more environmentally sustainable and circular products.’
It’s part of a package of measures that are central to achieving the objectives of the EU’s 2020 Circular Economy Action Plan and is therefore a key element of the European Green Deal, the ‘proverbial sledgehammer’ being used to move the European Union towards a circular economy and its bid to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
“The EU Green Deal has a very strong objective to ‘decouple economic growth from resource use,” said Mark Edridge, a consultant at the Swiss textiles supply chain solutions specialist, Bluesign. “And it’s working under the proviso that you shouldn’t have to drive economic growth through mining, deforestation, harvesting, or drilling but that everything you could possibly need in the future can be made from what we already have in circulation.”
Formally adopted by European Parliament on 23 April this year, ESPR has been drawn up to replace the current Ecodesign Directive, a legislative piece that regulates 29 product categories, posing mainly energy-related criteria. However, the new ESPR wants to cover the “broadest possible range of products” with more diverse Ecodesign criteria – much of which is aligned to the EU’s Right to Repair and efforts to boost circularity, durability, reusability, upgradability, and repairability.
From the consumer’s point of view, it’s hoped for that ESPR compliance will become ‘the yardstick for seeing that sustainable products become the norm’, facilitating the greater transition to products with a reduced environmental and climatic impact.
Next to Ecodesign criteria, the ESPR will see the eventual roll-out of a Digital Product Passport for all regulated products. This will be an easily accessible tag on the products that makes sustainability information instantly available to supply chain actors, regulators, and consumers alike.
To address the practice of destroying unsold consumer products, the ESPR will mandate companies to adopt measures to prevent this practice and disclose unsold product disposal data. As part of this area, the ESPR would also compel companies to announce on their websites how many of their unsold products they destroy. It’s within the framework that a wider ban on product destruction (those outside of the footwear and textile sectors) would be implemented if deemed necessary. Meanwhile, this direct ban on the destruction of unsold textile and footwear will apply to large companies, while smaller businesses benefit from exemptions and medium-sized companies have a transitional period with which to navigate the regulation.
Bluesign’s Mark Eldridge, said: “It’s a truth that currently, textiles and apparel are seen by the EU as a pollutant – and this is because there are no firm end of life solutions for them. So the people bringing them to market are in a sense ‘polluters’. Therefore, it falls to those polluters to become accountable for cleaning up their pollution when it reaches the end of its useful life.
“And thinking of apparel producers as polluters really changes your frame of reference. For example, the disposal of unsold stocks of apparel is going to be prohibited from 2026, which raises the question: ‘Then what am I going to do with all this when there’s no recycling infrastructure?’
“Well, the EU’s answer to this is simply: ‘don’t make them.'”
As with the majority of the EU Green Deal legislative pieces, the ESPR will have a knock-on effect for businesses outside of the EU yet trading with member states. In fact, suppliers from countries outside of the EU – so-called ‘third countries’ – will be expected to showcase a movement towards making their products more sustainably and responsibly, acting within the guidelines of the ESPR framework.
It’s anticipated that the EU will offer support to those countries or businesses to better understand how these requirements will impact operations on a local level.
