Larger retailers will no longer be allowed to destroy unsold clothing in the EU in the future. The ban is part of the Ecodesign Regulation, which negotiators from the EU Parliament and the member states have provisionally agreed on. According to the information, there are exceptions for small companies and a transition period of six years for medium-sized companies. In principle, the ban should be applied two years after the regulation comes into force. The negotiating partners said the EU Commission may extend the ban to other products in the future.
Parliament and EU states still have to officially approve the agreement, but this is considered a formality. The EU Commission made the first proposal for the Ecodesign Regulation in March 2022. Thanks to the regulations contained therein, products should last longer, be easier to reuse, repair and recycle and use fewer resources such as energy and water.
The agreement states that the EU Commission can issue legally binding requirements to make goods such as furniture, tires, detergents, paints or chemicals more environmentally friendly. The aspects of durability and repairability, resource efficiency and the environmental footprint should be taken into account. The product information should be available as a “digital product passport”. The chairwoman of the Internal Market Committee in the EU Parliament, Anna Cavazzini, also announced a repair index: This would allow consumers to see how easily a product can be repaired when purchasing.
According to projections by Bayerischer Rundfunk, based on figures from the market research institute Euromonitor International from 2019, 230 million textiles are not sold every year – in Germany alone. According to the European Commission, the EU generates 12.6 tons of textile waste every year, of which only 22 percent is reused or recycled. The rest is usually shredded or burned. To date, it has simply been cheaper for companies to destroy the clothing than to donate or recycle it.