Textile turnaround: making clothes brands responsible for waste management
Europe produces mountains of textile waste that is either burned, buried or shipped off to developing countries. A new European scheme aims to make producers responsible for the life-cycle of their products, while incentivising investment.
Transcript
00:00 Defining what is rubbish and what is not when it comes to textiles is the aim behind the
00:07 European Commission's proposed new waste management rules.
00:11 The hope is a common set of rules will lead to investments in collection, sorting and
00:15 more as well as addressing the issue of shipping textile waste mislabeled as second-hand clothes.
00:22 I'm very optimistic and actually happy, enthusiastic about what the European Commission, the European
00:29 Union is actually doing because this has been one of the most deregulated markets in the
00:41 history of the industry. We just take all of this stuff and dump it in other parts of
00:47 the world. So this new directive is actually asking for a ban on the exportation of textile
00:53 waste in these amounts and these quantities to countries that are unable to process it
01:00 and to actually make real social value, economic value out of the second-hand clothing that
01:07 are produced by our consumption habits over here.
01:12 And another aspect that the European Union is focusing on is more investments into the actual technologies
01:17 that are needed for textile to textile recycling which is something that is still very far
01:22 from reality in the world.
01:27 (upbeat music)