European governments are pushing for action on the fast fashion, paving the way for a levies targeting firms whose business model, and marketing strategy, is based low-prices and high-turnover. Governments should be able to impose levies on lost-cost, high-turnover clothing retailers based on how much their business practices encourage overconsumption and lead to increased waste, environment ministers have agreed. The measures, agreed at an EU Council summit on Monday (17 June), would be part of a review of EU rules on waste prevention and management that specifically targets the textile and food industries by applying the ‘polluter pays’ principle, making extended producer responsibility (EPR) schemes mandatory.
This would mean companies paying a proportional contribution to the cost of collecting, sorting, transport and treatment of waste garments and footwear. The fee would be modulated based on factors such as durability and the environmental impact of production. But ministers want to go further when it comes to fast fashion, by adding to the Waste Framework Directive an explicit recognition that most clothes are now disposed of before they are worn out.
They implicitly blame aggressive marketing strategies for this increasing trend. National authorities should have the power to “modulate producers' financial contributions on the basis of the practices leading to such overgeneration of waste textile, in particular in relation to industrial and commercial strategies.