The European Union is cracking down on disposable fashion with mandatory corporate sustainability due diligence legislation that could be finalized by this time next year. At Denim PV in Berlin, experts tried to help manufacturers and fashion brands prepare their supply chain for the new standards and make sense of the laws even when no one knows exactly what the final rules will be.
“We have many contacts with companies or former members of the national association asking us what’s happening because they all impact different parts of the value chain,” said Mauro Scalia, director of sustainable businesses for Euratex, the official European industry association for textile clothing.
The Brussels-based association represents the 154,000 companies encompassing the European industry and advises policymakers on how legislation impacts the industry. Though there are 16 pieces of new legislation that target textiles, Scalia said some will change how the global textile value chain operates.
Eco design requirements will set minimum legal criteria for a product to be placed in the market, and textiles are expected to be the first sector which will be regulated. Brands are legally allowed to sell garments that fall apart after one washing, but that will change with durability requirements.
“At Euratex, we specifically advocate to focus this requirement on durability and reusability—or the capacity of a garment to be reused again which [basically] means quality,” Scalia said.
There will be information requirements to ensure that consumers have access to product details. This will likely be in the form of a QR code on a garment label that serves as a digital product passport, though Scalia pointed out that it is not yet decided on what information will be required. He said it could include details about the materials, such as where they were made, and the processes used in their production and information about recycled content.
“This legislation is going to be a groundbreaking rule because it will have [an] impact [on] European [companies] and any part of the [global] supply chain which sells products in Europe, online included,” Scalia said.
“Green claim” legislation aims to keep companies honest. Brands will have to justify their sustainability claims with robust lifecycle assessments and demonstrate their sustainability goals. Scalia said this aims to prevent brands from cherry-picking “what is good for you and neglect what is not good for you.”
Another piece of legislation will cover mandatory collection of discarded textiles, which Scalia said most European counties aren’t ready to handle. Textiles will have to be sorted the same way glass, paper and metals are collected. He said a tax will be placed on product to fund a system to organize this collection.
The issues the proposed legislation addresses are not new to Kristina Seidler-Lynders, external stakeholder engagement for C&A, who said the European fashion retailer has been investing in projects that promote sustainability, circularity, and better worker conditions.
Though the rules will level the playing field, preparing for the unknown is challenging. ““It’s hard to communicate to suppliers what we need from them,” Seidler-Lynders said.
Seidler-Lynders said C&A is closely monitoring the legislative progress, even while extracting details on what’s really needed remains an uphill battle. “The next thing is to translate that information internally because we need to evaluate what is likely to come to prepare. Nothing is fixed yet…so we make educated guesses and align [our departments] internally,” she said.
Though it’s a positive direction, the company is also grappling with some EU countries creating their own legislation. “We very much welcome harmonization, so that’s something we try to feed back to policymakers,” she said.
Ivo Mersiowsky, managing director of Quantis Germany, a sustainability consultancy, said 75 percent of companies are unprepared for major legislative changes. The three hurdles he sees for the industry are building the necessary transparency and traceability into the supply chain, establishing design practices that promote durability for garments that are easy to repair and recycle, and creating consumer-facing communication plans backed up by data and science.
“I think the majority of companies will need to review their business model,” he said, especially as they begin to receive metrics from their suppliers. “They are simply not happy with the results they get back because they feel they cannot trust the results because so many different standards are being used.”
Companies may also need the support of human resources.
“Get prepared now because you will need to have the right competences on board,” Mersiowsky added. “You may need to hire new people who bring the relevant skills to do all of that and you need to build your processes toward that.”