The Environmental Impact of Fast Fashion

The EU is committed to promoting sustainability, circularity, and responsible practices within the textile industry to reduce its negative environmental and societal impact. The EU has formulated a “Strategy for Sustainable and Circular Textiles” to transform the sector by 2030.

Environmental Impact of Clothing: Clothing serves as protection and self-expression, but the love for clothes results in significant environmental costs, including energy consumption, water usage, waste generation, and pollution.

Textiles Sector’s Impact: The textiles sector significantly contributes to environmental degradation and climate change, with substantial potential to save resources, reduce waste, and combat climate change.

EU Strategy for Sustainable Textiles: The EU has developed a strategy to make the textiles industry more sustainable and circular by addressing the entire lifecycle of textiles. This involves making textiles durable, repairable, and recyclable, encouraging re-use and repair services, and promoting responsible producer practices.

Design Requirements and Circular Economy: The EU plans to set textile design requirements to enhance durability, reparability, and recyclability. The focus is also on minimum recycled content in textiles.

Addressing Overproduction and Waste: The fast fashion industry produces excessive overconsumption and waste. The EU aims to tackle the overproduction and overconsumption of clothing, prevent textile waste, and restrict the export of textile waste.

Microplastics Challenge: Synthetic textiles shed microplastics during washing, contributing to environmental pollution. The EU is researching to address the release of microplastics from fabrics.

Tackling Greenwashing: The EU is taking steps to combat misleading environmental claims and ‘greenwashing’ by proposing standard criteria against deceptive claims. This helps consumers make informed, sustainable choices.

Respecting Human Rights: The EU is introducing corporate sustainability due diligence rules to ensure fair and responsible corporate behavior across value chains, in line with human rights and environmental standards.

Reasons for EU Action: The textiles sector’s rapid growth and resource-intensive nature contribute to climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution. The EU is addressing these issues to make the industry more sustainable and circular.