Sustainable and Circular Textiles by 2030

Last week the European Commission introduced their vision and strategy to realise the earlier announced sustainable and circular goals regarding textiles, as part of the EU GreenDeal Program. All Member States and companies are encouraged to support the objectives of the strategy.

However, not a single time professional textilecare is mentioned as one of the options to successfully decrease the burdon textiles have on today’s and tomorrows environment. Hence there is still a lot of work to be done to convince the EU politicians that professional textilecare offers one of the major solutions to realise the set objectives.

The Commission’s 2030 Vision for Textiles
The EU is working on a Transition Pathway fort he textile ecosystem to successfully achieve the green and digital transitions and fort he ecosystem to become more resilient. Today markt the start of a co-creation process, in which stakeholders are invited -throuh a survey and workshops- to propose specific actions and work towards these common objectives.

Their vision includes that:

  • All textile products placed on the EU market should be durable, repairable and recyclable.
  • “Fast Fashion is out of Fashion”
  • Focus on Profitable re-use and repair services
  • A competitive, resilient, and innovative textile sector that take responsibility for their products along the value chain.
  • Circular clothes will become the norm.

Key actions in the EU Textiles Strategy

The Commission focusses on 8 measures:

  1. Set design requirements for textiles to make them last longer, easier to repair and recycle
  2. Introduce a clearer Digital Product Passport
  3. Tackle greenwashing
  4. Reverse overproduction and overconsumption
  5. Mandatory extended producer responsibility for textiles with eco-modulation of fees
  6. Adress the unintentional release of microplastics from synthetic textiles
  7. Restrict the export of textile waste
  8. Incentivise circular business models, including re-use and repair sectors

PTC Actionprogram
Meanwhile several initiatives within the PTC industry have been taken to set up projects and activities within this framework. More initiatives are expected in european countries in the near future. This will create new market opportunities for innovative PTC companies. A challenging development after a long time of setbacks for the industry.