The proposals published by the European Commission in its Textiles Strategy last March are insufficient because they fail to address harmful business models, according to Zero Waste Europe (ZWE). The environmental organisation noted that the proposals were limited to eco-design and the management of textile products when they become waste. The EU strategy did not adequately tackle the real problem of fast fashion and overproduction, which were responsible for the textile industry’s rampant consumption of resources, ZWE writes in a position paper released last week.
Global textile companies were currently unable to "articulate a proper vision of what sustainable fashion systems could look like," the ZWE criticised. In the past few decades, the use of cheap synthetic fibres had fuelled the current business model based on overproduction combined with limited accountability for negative environmental and social impacts, the NGO argued....
