Long-awaited EU legislative proposal on producer responsibility

The European Commission has taken further steps towards a more sustainable and circular textile industry, proposing new rules that make producers responsible for the entire life cycle of textile products and thus obliged to finance collection and sorting that enables reuse and recycling.

- This is a long-awaited legislative proposal and it is good that we finally have clarity on what producer responsibility may look like to accelerate the work towards circular textile management in Sweden. The fact that the Commission emphasizes the importance of sorting in order to promote reuse and increased service life is good. Wargön Innovation has been working for a long time with the aim of creating opportunities for reuse through effective sorting, because without effective sorting, it will not be possible to comply with the producer responsibility, says Caroline Düberg Martinsson, Innovation Manager at Wargön Innovation.

The responsibility of producers for collection and sorting is clarified.

Textiles are the fourth largest area of emissions in the EU and finding solutions to reduce the negative environmental impact of textile production is an important part of the transition to circular production. It is also clear that circular production opens up the possibility of more local jobs and a large supply of sustainable textile raw materials in the EU.

When many Member States, including Sweden, are now working to implement the legal requirement for the collection of textiles by 2025, this message from the Commission is particularly welcome. With this, it is clear that it is the producers who will finance investments for separate collection, sorting, reuse and recycling and therefore we can now see the entire chain from collection to textile being taken care of in different ways.

Producer responsibility for textiles is proposed to become mandatory across the EU, making producers responsible for covering the cost of managing discarded textiles. There will be a clear incentive to reduce waste and increase the circularity of products already at the design stage to facilitate both reuse and recycling. The fact that the bill is clear that textiles should primarily be sorted for reuse is also an important mark that clearly shows that collection and sorting must be shaped in a way that allows textiles to be utilized for second hand, redesign and repair.