Italy’s verdant Veneto region is home to luxury fashion brands and world-class textile suppliers, but it has also been plagued by environmental pollution with its watercourses poisoned by “forever chemicals”.
In the 1960s, textile group Marzotto installed a research centre in the town of Trissino, where it began to produce the chemicals known as perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, to waterproof garments. The company, first called Rimar and then Miteni, eventually changed hands and became a supplier to the pharmaceutical and chemical industries before going bankrupt in 2018 following the water pollution scandal, but the damage to the environment will be permanent, experts say.
Families in the provinces of Vicenza, Verona and Padua are now grappling with the long-term health effects, which include increased risk of cardiovascular problems, caused by water contamination.
Water and air pollution are major concerns confronting the fashion industry. Dyeing and finishing processes, for example, are responsible for 20 per cent of global water pollution. Laundry loads of polyester-based clothes can also discharge hundreds of thousands of microplastic fibres into the water systems, a European parliament study shows.
The global fashion industry is said to be responsible for 10 per cent of global carbon emissions — more than international flights and shipping combined. Global textile fibre production has almost doubled in the two decades between 2000-2020, with a growing number of items being worn between 7 and 10 times before being thrown away, according to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation.
Yet despite this environmental damage, change has been hard to achieve. Some are hopeful that new European legislation will help reduce the industry’s environmental footprint, yet others argue that until global fast-fashion groups that produce goods outside the EU are made to abide by the same manufacturing rules and end the supply of cheap items that fuel binge-buying by consumers, reforms will have limited impact.
“We aren’t doing enough to fix the problem,” says Veneto-based Matteo Ward, co-founder and chief executive of consulting studio WRÅD, and the co-author of documentary series Junk, which examines the human and environmental cost of fast fashion. “Social justice, which is a prerequisite for environmental transition, isn’t a real priority . . . there are ways to evolve but the fashion industry is yet to find the courage.”
According to a 2024 report by private equity firm Ambienta, which focuses on environmentally sustainable businesses, the fashion industry’s biggest challenges are the quick wear and tear of low-quality textile items and the limited availability of fibres for reuse or recycling as well as recycling technologies. “Most available recycling processes require ‘high purity’ textile waste, thus they are not viable for the majority of clothes on the market because these include mixed fibres and colours,” according to Ambienta.
Mechanical recycling — the process of sorting, washing, grinding re-granulating and compounding — is economically effective, but it is limited in scope because it only works well with wool items.
The remaining problem is that the scope and accessibility of such recycling techniques is still limited. “[All] these factors together make direct landfill, incineration or shipping abroad more economically appealing than recycling locally,” according to the Ambienta report co-authors Federica Mallone and Fabio Ranghino.
Fast fashion, which has made trends accessible to more consumers globally with business models based on high volumes, is considered the main culprit for the rise in consumption and pollution. Data shows that by 2030, 69 per cent of global textile production will be based on polyester, nylon and other synthetic fibres. Only 25 per cent will have a natural origin.
“Today a Shein item costs even less than a sandwich . . . businesses can produce this fast and this cheap only because they use exploited labour and use cheap fossil fuel-based fibres,” says Eco-Age co-founder Livia Giuggioli Firth.
Durability should be the first criteria when talking about sustainability in textiles, according to Ambienta, but it is hardly mentioned by any so-called green label. “Likely so because it is in conflict with the overarching high-volume, low-price dynamics underpinning the sector,” wrote Mallone and Ranghino.
Last year, the EU introduced an extended producer responsibility mechanism which makes brands responsible for the disposal of each item they introduce to the market. In April, it approved a right to repair directive that would encourage consumers in Europe to fix defective products instead of replacing them. And in May, it passed legislation banning the destruction of unsold textiles and footwear, effective from 2026 (there are exemptions for smaller companies).
But as ever with advances in sustainability, it’s complicated. The European Fashion Alliance (EFA), whose members include international fashion chambers and textile organisations, have been broadly supportive of the legislation but have also highlighted problematic aspects of certain proposals.
For example, in a position paper last year, it said the requirement to include recycled fibres in new garments could lead to the production of more blended material which is ultimately harder to recycle with the currently available technology. It also said that when imposing recycling requirements, regulators must take into account the technological barriers and the lack of sorting solutions and disassembling processes.
“We appreciate the European Commission’s approach to sustainability in fashion but we ask for certain amendments to the law to safeguard and promote our values and creativity,” Carlo Capasa, the chair of the Italian fashion chamber, said at a EFA conference in Brussels this year. “The industry cannot avoid the use of virgin fibres all together and we must incentivise circularity with other industries . . . and we must better define alternatives such as recycle and reuse for unsold products that cannot be destroyed.”
Since the European Commission’s 2019 Green Deal, EU institutions have been working to pass legislation aimed at minimising the fashion industry’s carbon and environmental footprint by making textiles more durable and reusable. Companies have opposed a new requirement to declare the amount of overproduction or unsold goods citing “competition” concerns. The EFA has proposed to make such data available to only the European Commission.
Discussions around the introduction of a Digital Product Passport, or a QR code that contains a garment’s textile information, are ongoing but the timeline is unclear. In the US, where this information is already a requirement for most textile products, it has helped ease the recycling process, which currently relies on manual sorting and infrared cameras.
“We have been promoting responsible consumption, then Shein and Temu arrived out of nowhere and made H&M and Zara look like luxury brands . . . Unless these businesses stop bombarding us with disposable fashion (their business model is based on this vicious cycle) or consumers go on strike, nothing will stop,” says Giuggioli Firth. “What makes me hopeful today is legislation. To know that countries such as France or states such as California have started discussing laws to put a tax on waste, for example, is a great step in the right direction.”
There is friction, however, in the sector behind the scenes, high fashion labels and industry insiders are growing increasingly frustrated with the way their sector is being targeted by regulation and activists when it comes to sustainability. Consumers also need to do their part, they say, in caring for their clothes and wearing them for longer than just a handful of times, even if their price tag was affordable.
Mallone and Ranghino are hopeful that awareness among younger generations could help bring change. Though consumers in the 18-25 age group are big adopters of fast fashion, the global second-hand market is also growing thanks to “economic convenience and increasing environmental awareness of younger customers”, according to Ambienta.
Amazon data included in the Ambienta report shows that 30 per cent of clothes worn by European Gen Z consumers are pre-owned. In the US, 62 per cent of consumers in the same age group consider a second-hand item before buying a new one, says Ambienta citing a Thred Up survey. “This driver is likely to self-reinforce, year after year, as these younger consumers increase their spending power and their share of overall spending grows,” said Mallone and Ranghino.
Giuggioli Firth says everyone must do their part. “Change is always bottom up and top down . . . corporates have a duty to change and citizens have a responsibility to start buying less.”
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