Edited by Stefano Cancarini and Laura Colombo
On Tuesday, September 9, the Parliament gave final approval to new rules to prevent and reduce food and textile waste in the European Union. This is a fundamental step towards food and textile sustainability, focusing on two of the most resource intensive sectors, with significant negative environmental and social externalities also beyond the Union’s borders.
In detail, regarding the food sector, the European ruler aims to reduce waste in products manufacturing, processing, and distribution stages, in retail, restaurants and households. To this end, Member States will need to develop and support behavioural changes, also through awareness campaigns, identify inefficiencies in the supply chain and support cooperation among players, ensuring a fair distribution of costs and benefits. Moreover, they will also need to encourage food donation initiatives and facilitate access to funding opportunities for small and medium-sized enterprises.
The directive clearly sets the goals to be achieved at a national level by 2030: reducing food waste in processing and manufacturing by at least 10% compared to data recorded in 2020 and reducing per capita food waste by 30%, in retail, restaurants and food services and in households.
As for the textile sector, besides encouraging separate waste collection and reducing synthetic fabrics – in order to reduce microplastic release -, the directive introduces the principle of “extended producer responsibility”, aiming to make players responsible for promoting the circular economy of reuse and recycling of products, with focus in limiting fast fashion and ultra-fast fashion.
In this context, “producer” refers to the manufacturer, but also the importer and distributor of textile products and footwear, including clothing and accessories, hats and footwear, but also blankets, curtains, bed and kitchen linen. The regime will be lighter for microenterprises and self-employed workers dealing with customized products, as they represent a virtuous segment of the market.
The producer’s responsibility is reflected in the objectives that must be ensured by Member States within 30 months of the directive’s entry into force: ensuring that producers, through specific organizations, participate in financing the costs for the collection, sorting, and processing of textiles for reuse and recycling, the costs of research and development of recycling technologies, and the costs for promotion of responsible textile management to the public of consumers. Member States must also establish specific registers, in which producers must enroll for each state in which they intend to distribute their products.
EU Countries will have 20 months to implement the general principles outlined in the directive. Therefore, it will be essential to evaluate the specific provisions that Member States will adopt, to assess the achievement of the goals set at the European level.
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