While those fighting for a more responsible fashion industry could agree that Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) schemes are a good thing, those managing the logistics of it all while countries grapple with their unique rules and how to find some harmonization across borders, are facing a steeper battle in navigating it.
Broadly, EPR policy shifts responsibility for textiles and other products upstream, calling on the companies creating and selling products to take responsibility for their end of life rather than leaving it to local municipalities and taxpayers to foot the bill. Companies can either handle their own collection of used clothing or join a Producer Responsibility Organization (PRO), which takes care of multiple companies’ obligations.
And the clock is officially ticking for countries and the companies that operate within them to make EPR schemes operational. European Union member states have until June 2027 to turn this EU-level law into their own national law, and until April 2028 at the latest to ensure EPR schemes to be operational.
There’s a lot to think about on the supply chain operations side of things. For one, with EPR fees tied to product design, supply chain teams now have a financial incentive to design for circularity, considering everything from material composition to reuse potential. The requirements of EPR will also increase traceability demands, which means tightening data systems and ensuring bills of materials are accurate.
Among the most challenging aspects of it all is that multiple countries or even different states are creating their own rules means, which mean different fee structures, different reporting templates and even different timelines. The result could be both added costs and confusion.
In The Netherlands, producers are required, as of January this year, to prepare 50 percent of collected textiles for reuse or recycling, and pay an EPR fee of €0.24 per kg for textiles they expect to sell. In France, which has had a scheme in place since 2008, producers must provide garment labels that inform customers how their clothing can be collected for recycling. Their EPR fees are between €0.01 and €0.06 per garment. In California, which passed the Responsible Textile Recovery Act in September 2024, producers are required to join a PRO that will collect and recycle on their behalf, and penalties run up to $50,000 per day for non-compliance.
“It’s obvious why differences between member states can create a lot of fragmentation across the EU and also complicate cross border compliance,” said Katarina Biloglav, public affairs manager at Policy Hub, an initiative aimed at fostering discussions designed to advance textile circularity, during a recent webinar co-hosted by U.K.-based NGO WRAP—which focuses on waste prevention and recycling policies. “It’s not anymore about whether EPR is needed. There is a consensus that this is needed and why it’s needed, but the focus is now on how to make it less complex.”
Now, it’s about harmonizing.
The EU released its environmental omnibus on December 3, a simplification agenda that took existing legislation and amended it to avoid duplication of obligations and simplify reporting. As part of the EU’s accompanying Waste Framework Directive, there will also be a single digital entry point that, according to Biloglav, would make it easier for producers to register across the EU and appoint authorized representatives to handle their waste responsibilities, which would simplify cross-border compliance. But that’s not all that needs streamlining.
“We see, for example, a need to harmonize the list of activities that can be funded through EPR fees. If each member state defines this list differently, it can really lead to inconsistent cost coverage,” Biloglav said. “We also see a need to harmonize further how fees are calculated. There is also a question of operational and financial models for the PROs, where we see different approaches emerging.”
There may be multitude of ways for the industry to get on the same page with EPR, and while none of them are simple, there are some best practices to note.
Since most EPR fees are eco-modulated—meaning producers selling more sustainable products that are easier to recycle pay less than those with less durable and harder to recycle products—the industry can at least align on the criteria producers need to satisfy in order to benefit from the discounts. As Jordan Girling, head of Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) at WRAP, explained, it should be clear “precisely what qualifies a product to be more durable or more recyclable than another product.”
An alignment on waste hierarchy prioritization—the EU’s guiding framework for how waste should be managed, with actions ranked from most preferred to least preferred—would also be “particularly important for textiles,” he said. “There’s a couple of key channels for waste hierarchy prioritization in the EU through the EPR scheme and the legislation itself, [which] can be achieved through things like integrating mandatory reuse targets into the legislation, like has been done in the Netherlands, or adopting take back obligations for retailers…the waste hierarchy can also be prioritized through the PROs.”
If waste treatment organizations could really collaborate, that would also improve supply chain operations as regulators work to clean up fashion.
“It is fundamental to introduce a mechanism to ensure there is a strong and effective collaboration among these waste treatment operators—like the collection of textile waste sorting processes—in order to really enhance textile to textile recycling, to really move forward with…improving the recyclability status in the European Union, but also to foster the growth market for secondary raw materials in the EU,” said Policy Hub policy director Marina Prados Espínola. “The problem that we see right now in the final text of the Wastewater Directive…[for example] is that there are hints to this need in the text, but there is no clear clarity on how this will [happen].
If there is no clarity there, she added, “There will be potentially too many local solutions and maybe very divergent risk management systems that…are not similar or harmonized, and that will move us away [from] having this economy of scale for the secondary material market.”
What may be one of the most critical points to agree on, according to Prados Espínola, is what activities can be funded by the EPR.
“One very practical example is…preparation for recycling, a key element that needs to be funded by EPR fees,” she said. “The issue that we have right now with the final text of the Wastewater Directive is that it’s not clear the definition that preparation for recycling has in the text, so that would be leading to different interpretations in the process.” Here, Prados Espínola explained, there’s a “huge margin for clarification, but also for harmonization.”
For any countries or American states looking to develop new EPR schemes, Girling advises drawing on what’s already out there so that things are as aligned as they can be at the outset. WRAP currently supports those looking to design textile EPR schemes, advising countries on how to develop them and, through initiatives like the UK Textiles Pact, a voluntary initiative that helps textile businesses transition to more circular practices.
A lot remains to be determined when it comes to what’s effective in the EU and beyond where EPR is concerned, and the only way forward is strong coordination among different EU member states and those in the U.S. as the industry works to make the policy more productive than unnecessarily burdensome.
“Harmonization for us is one of the key elements of this conversation,” Policy Hub’s Prados Espínola said. “We are engaging with the collectors, different institutions, we are doing several things to call for as much harmonization as possible.”
