Holding fashion brands accountable for the burden of their production. Is this the solution to fashion’s overconsumption and pollution?

A few weeks back, after several years of debate and discussion, the European Parliament finally green-lighted the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) requirements for textile manufacturers. And it’s most definitely a welcome step towards making fashion more circular.

But there are concerns—and quite legitimately so—about this step being far too little, and far too late. Let’s break it down to understand where we are today, and where we should be heading with EPR.

What does the EU say about EPR for textile manufacturers, with the new law?

The Fashion industry, especially fast and ultrafast fashion, has not just been mass producing by mindlessly extracting our finite resources, but also contributing to the ever-increasing heap of textile waste by deliberately producing low-quality material that gets dumped in landfills far too often.

The EU rightly decided that the burden of cost of this immense pollution should be on the brands, and not on the common people, often from the Global South.

Image credit: Pexels (Mumtahina Tanni)

 

So it declared that the producers themselves, i.e. fashion manufacturing businesses, must finance the entire waste management chain – collection, sorting, recycling – through Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) schemes. As the name suggests, it is “extending” the responsibility of the producers to the end of life of the clothes they produce, by paying EPR fees.

As one of the producers, we couldn’t agree more. When we make clothes, we profit off you buying them, we are the people responsible to ensure that these clothes last decades in your wardrobe, and not at all in landfills.

So this is a good move, right?

Partly.

Good things first – it brings in accountability to the businesses, and not just you, the buyer. For years, we have been told that if only we recycle enough, we are going to be able to dig ourselves out of the climate change fueled hole. But that’s just not true.

The responsibility doesn’t lie simply with you. It lies with the people who are actually producing the clothes that are designed to be wasted.

So with the mandate of businesses having to pay for the end-of-life processing, it shifts the onus to them.

More importantly, this new law can make fast and ultrafast fashion pay more, as they damage the environment more. This is because the more waste generated, the more the waste generator needs to pay as EPR fees.

Image credit: Pixabay (Jarmoluk)

 

Companies will also need to register and report data on their products, and make sure their designs meet new eco-friendly standards, such as being easier to recycle or repair. This will also be key to making the fashion industry disclose how much it really produces. Activists have been asking companies to disclose their annual production volumes, but very few producers actually have done that.

In an ideal world, fashion producers would be encouraged to promote reuse, repair, and high-quality recycling to keep clothes in circulation longer. But that’s not the entire picture.

What is the problem?

There are multiple of them.

First, the timeline itself – Member States of the EU have been given 30 months to put this law into effect. That’s almost another 3 years of mounting waste, indiscriminate pollution, and mindless extraction. Considering the fact that the fashion industry contributes to more than 10% of global carbon emissions, and is expected to go up by a whopping 60% by 2030, we just don’t have the time of 30 months to ask businesses to do what they should have done from the very beginning.

Then comes the question of how much the EPR fees are! Are they truly going to be a deterrent enough for large corporations to change their extractive practices, or is the cost simply going to be passed on to you, the customer, and business as usual will continue?

Another big caveat is the complication of the supply chain itself. Who is paying for EPR – the brand or their fabric manufacturer, or the yarn dyer? Most fashion businesses are not vertically integrated. In this case, it is crucial to hold the profiteer accountable with clear rules in place.

Then comes the crucial issue of waste colonialism. Much of the textile waste generated by the Global North is not dumped in their countries at all. It goes to the Global South – countries like Ghana, Kenya, Uganda, Chile, Philippines, and India are the countries where all the clothing waste is dumped.

Image credit: Pixabay

 

So when producers pay for more collection and sorting, without global accountability, this can easily result in more waste being sold to the Global South, and making the already dangerously full landfills to completely dismantle the local environment. Experts like Elmar Stroomer, Co-founder of Africa Collect Textile, have already voiced their concerns over this. Unless Member States put the global accountability in place—to ensure not an ounce of waste goes to landfills in the Global South—this is just a different form of colonisation of fashion.

This is precisely why we, at Jiwya, don’t rely on regulations to do the right thing. We do it ourselves.

We know that without challenging the very systems on which the fashion industry is built—colonisation—sustainability is just not possible. We know that it’s not just end-of-life, but every single step of the fashion supply chain that needs to be cleaned up.

And it starts with decolonising the very way we make our clothes.

Our EPR policy is also rooted in the same ethos – we take 100% responsibility for our clothes. Our pieces are going to last a lifetime in your wardrobe, and whenever you want to repair, revamp, or return for a new product, our doors are open through our Re:Jiwya Program.

And despite that, if any of our clothes do find themselves in a landfill, they will biodegrade completely – leaving not a single trace on our lands or our waters.

As consumers, you can do three simple things:

1. Care for your existing wardrobe

2. Choose investment pieces, choose better

3. Hold your favourite brands accountable to change

The fashion industry needs change, it can start with you. 

Until then, we, at Jiwya, will continue to be the change in our every fibre, literally.