What are the European Union’s efforts to enhance transparency and traceability in the textile sector?
European Union (EU) regulations in the textile industry strongly emphasise traceability and transparency as tools for addressing consumer protection, labour rights, and environmental sustainability concerns.
Traceability has emerged as a key regulatory area by the EU in setting global standards to protect the environment and consumers from greenwashing.
What is traceability?
“Traceability means knowing when, where, and how each piece of a garment is made, allowing us to trace it back from source to consumer, providing visibility of the fashion supply chain and enabling improved sustainability governance by industry players.”
Fashion For Good, 2023
Accessing accurate and up-to-date data is crucial to learning about the fashion industry’s impact and aligning with sustainable targets.
This article explores traceability and consumer protection requirements that are being promoted or mandated by the EU regulations.
Remembering the EU Strategy for Sustainable and Circular Textiles
The EU Strategy for Sustainable and Circular Textiles aims to create a framework and vision for the textile industry. This strategy impacted and will continue to impact many other regulations and initiatives and should be brought into reflection.
The key objectives by 2030 are:
– Textile products on the EU market should be durable and recyclable, largely made of recycled fibres, free of hazardous substances and produced concerning social rights and the environment.
– Fast fashion should be ”out of fashion” and re-use and repair services would be widely available.
– Textiles should be collected at the end of their lifetime, and their incineration and landfilling should be reduced to a minimum thanks to innovative fibre-to-fibre recycling.
Source: European Parliament (2019)
Key Regulations and Initiatives to enhance transparency and traceability in the textile sector
Providing consumers with better and more reliable information often means creating and improving the existing tools.
The Regulations and Initiatives detailed below explore the main traceability and consumer protection requirements demanded by the EU and impact the textile sector.
1) New Consumer Agenda (COM/2020/696)
This agenda was launched in 2020 and presents a vision for EU consumer policy from 2020 to 2025. This agenda clearly identifies that consumers need to be empowered to make sustainable choices and that their rights should be protected in all circumstances.
The agenda covers five key priority areas:
a) Green Transition
Sustainable products must be widely available to consumers in the EU market, and better information should be shared to help consumers make informed choices. The European Commission has taken responsibility for fighting greenwashing practices and early obsolescence, and it promotes repair and encourages more sustainable and “circular” products.
b) Digital Transformation
It has been identified that distorted commercial practices that disregard consumers’ right to make an informed choice or interfere with decision-making must be tackled.
c) Redress and enforcement of consumer rights
The EU has committed to supportive actions to assist Member States in timely implementing and enforcing consumer law, improve the national authority’s capacity to tackle illegal online commercial practices and identify unsafe products.
d) Specific needs of certain consumer groups
Aiming to protect vulnerable groups of consumers, such as children, older people, or those with disabilities. The EU has committed to looking into new requirements, increasing funding, and supporting advising initiatives.
e) International cooperation
It has reinforced the relevance of improving cooperation with international partners, such as China and Africa.
2) Directive on Empowering Consumers for the Green Transition (Directive (EU) 2024/825)
The Directive on Empowering Consumers for Green Transition of February 2024 will be applied on September 2026 and amends two existing consumer law Directives: the Consumer Rights Directive and the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive. The proposal to amend the Consumers Right directive was announced in the New Consumer Agenda.
The Directive aims to empower consumers for the green transition through better protection against unfair practices and through better information.
Some of the main changes that this Directive will bring relate to:
a) Prohibition of generic environmental claims
The adoption of generic environmental claims, such as ‘‘environmentally friendly”, ‘‘eco-friendly’‘, ‘‘green”, ‘‘carbon friendly’‘, ‘‘energy efficient” will be much more strict.
When excellent environmental performance can be shown, the environmental claim is not considered generic and can be used.
b) Prohibition of Sustainability Labels
The use of sustainable labels will also be stricter. Sustainability labels will be permitted based on a certification scheme established by public authorities.
c) Prohibition of Claims based on the offsetting of greenhouse gas emissions
The claim that a product, either a good or service, has a neutral, reduced, or positive impact on the environment regarding greenhouse gas emissions should be prohibited in all circumstances. According to the Directive, “Such claims should only be allowed when they are based on the actual lifecycle impact of the product in question, and not based on offsetting greenhouse gas emissions outside the product’s value chain, as the former and the latter are not equivalent “.
For example, suppose a company invests in environmental initiatives that do not impact the production of a particular product (e.g., carbon credits). In that case, these initiatives can be advertised as long as such information is not misleading and leads the consumer to believe that it positively reduces greenhouse gas emissions of the product’s value chain.
d) Prohibition of presenting a mandatory requirement
Advertising is a requirement imposed by law as a distinctive feature that should be banned. For example, if the inclusion of a certain amount of recycled materials for producing a specific product becomes mandatory, it cannot be advertised anymore.
3) Proposal for Green Claims Directive
The Green Claims Directive was proposed in 2022, and the final document is expected to be published in 2025.
This Directive addresses greenwashing and protects the consumers and the environment by ensuring that general or voluntary claims are reliable, comparable, and verifiable across the EU. This Directive also complements and further operationalises The Directive on Empowering Consumers for the Green Transition. These two Directives will create a single regulatory framework concerning environmental claims.
The Green Claim Directive aims to provide:
a) Clear criteria on how companies should prove their environmental claims and labels
b) Requirements for these claims and labels to be checked by an independent and accredited verifier
c) New rules on the governance of environmental labelling schemes to ensure they are solid, transparent and reliable
Source: European Commission (2024)
The final requirements are yet to be published, but it’s expected that before using any environmental claim and label, companies will be required to carry out an assessment to substantiate the claim. Only claims based on the latest scientific evidence will be permitted. The assessment must consider recognised scientific approaches in measuring environmental impact, such as lifecycle assessment or environmental footprint assessments, and not omit any relevant data. The information will need to be publicly made available in physical and online formats.
The claims will need to be verified under certification schemes by an independent and accredited third party.
Exceptions to the Green Claims Directive Rules might be applied to certain microenterprises.
4) Revision of the Textile Regulation (Regulation (EU) No 1007/2011)
Current rules on labelling textile products under the Textile Labelling Regulation are limited to the fibre composition of the textile products. This gap in information has allowed the introduction of differing labelling requirements across EU countries, increasing the complexity of information conveyed to the client. Also, new fibres are being developed, and recycling technologies are becoming available, which demands better fibre identification.
Updating and revising the Textile Labelling Regulation is essential for aligning the textile industry with the EU Green Deal and modern fibre definitions resulting from the EU strategy for sustainable and circular textiles. The revision is in progress, and the adoption is planned for the second quarter of 2025.
The introduction of specifications for physical and digital labelling of textiles, including sustainability and circularity parameters, is expected. At the same time, compliance costs for businesses might be reduced by ensuring regulatory clarity, consistency, and harmonisation throughout the EU.
5) EU Ecolabel
The EU Ecolabel is a voluntary scheme established in 1992 that encourages businesses to market environmentally friendly products and to make them identifiable to customers. Products with an EU Ecolabel must meet specific criteria that consider the whole life cycle of the products. This label encourages CO2 and waste reduction and the development of durable, easy-to-repair, and recyclable products.
The EU Ecolabel criteria for textile products were established in 2014, and in March 2024, the European Commission announced a revision of EU Ecolabel criteria for textile products. The revision process will be aligned with the EU Strategy for Sustainable and Circular Textiles and the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation proposal.
Additional regulations include Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSDR) and the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD). For extra details, consider reading these regulation articles.
Being fully aware of the present and future traceability and consumer protection requirements is crucial to making the best business decisions.
With Susplus, you can trace and measure the impact of your products to ensure compliance with future challenging regulations.
Useful References
European Commission (2024) Green claims. Available: https://environment.ec.europa.eu/topics/circular-economy/green-claims_en [Acessed: November 2024]
European Parliament (2019) EU Strategy for sustainable and circular textiles In “A European Green Deal”. Available: //www.europarl.europa.eu/legislative-train/theme-a-European-green-deal/file-eu-textiles-strategy [Acessed: November 2024]
Fashion for Good (2023): What is traceability? Available: https://fashionforgood.com/our_news/what-is-traceability/ [Acessed: November 2024]
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