On Tuesday, September 9, 2025, the European Parliament approved Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) for textiles. This legislation requires producers, brands, and sellers of clothing, footwear, and household textiles in the EU, including those selling from outside the EU, to take responsibility for collecting, sorting, and recycling their products once consumers discard them. It is an important step towards a more circular textile sector across Europe.
What the legislation entails
The core elements of the new EPR legislation include:
- Producer responsibility: brands pay for the processing of textile waste.
- Transparency in production volumes: companies must report how much textile they produce annually.
It is important to note that this is just the beginning. The broader European requirements on ecodesign, still under development, will be crucial to ensure that collected textiles can actually be reused or recycled effectively. Combined with the ambitious reuse and recycling targets, these measures will set the foundation for a truly circular textile system.
In addition, harmonization and simplification are crucial: regulations should not burden the sector with unnecessary bureaucracy, but instead enable knowledge exchange and ensure coherent data across the EU. Good implementation is key: member states must design systems that are workable in all EU countries and allow time to learn and build experience. Knowledge can partly be drawn from existing systems, but it is essential that this expertise is actively developed and shared.
At the same time, consumer behaviour plays a central role. The system can only have real impact if the relationship between people and their clothing is restored, through awareness and behavioural change.
Timeline and exceptions
- Transposition into national law: each EU country has 20 months to adopt the rules into national legislation.
- Setting up EPR systems: member states then have another 10 months to implement functioning systems, meaning full programs could be operational by April 2028 at the latest.
- Exceptions and flexibility: custom clothing, second-hand sellers, and micro-enterprises are given adjusted deadlines or exemptions to make the transition manageable.
How Belgium is organizing
In Belgium, Retexbel will act as a Producer Responsibility Organisation (PRO). Companies pay a fee based on their market share in Belgium. These funds will finance collection, sorting, and recycling, in collaboration with the social economy, such as second-hand shops.
Bruno Eggermont from Fedustria explains: “The system must ensure that all textiles, including those from non-European companies and online platforms, are subject to the same obligations.” HERWIN adds that especially medium- and low-quality clothing often ends up in landfills, and this new legislation should help change that.
Conclusion
The approval of EPR for textiles is a major European step towards circular textile value chains. Its success depends on effective implementation, harmonization, and knowledge sharing, ensuring the system is workable across all EU countries and that companies can actually take meaningful action.