EU cracks down on fast fashion and food waste

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

The EU has struck a deal to impose sweeping new rules on food and textile waste, putting the costs of clean up on companies and reshaping the economics for ecommerce platforms operating across the continent.

The provisional agreement will introduce legally binding targets for cutting food waste and force producers to cover the costs of collecting, sorting, and recycling textiles, following the European parliament and Council negotiations that ended late on Tuesday night.

The measures will place the extra financial and regulatory burdens on businesses, including fast-fashion brands and online retailers, amid growing scrutiny of the environmental impact of consumer industries.

Under the deal, EU member states must slash food waste by 10 per cent in food manufacturing and processing, and by 30 per cent per capita in retail, restaurants, food services and households by the end of 2030, measured from a 2021-2023 average baseline.

Large food businesses will also be required to make possible the donation of unsold but safe-to-eat food, in an attempt to reduce unnecessary waste.

The food industry generates close to 60mn tonnes of waste annually in the EU, while the textile sector contributes 12.6mn tonnes. Combined, these industries account for a significant share of municipal and industrial waste, as well as carbon emissions from production and disposal processes.

“The targets are an essential element in our commitment to halve food waste across the food chain,” said FoodDrinkEurope, the Brussels-based industry lobby group. “Importantly they should be agile targets to reflect fluctuations in food production volumes, taking waste calculations per tonne of food produced.”

The textile industry faces stricter obligations on the waste it generates. All textile producers — whether based in the EU or selling via ecommerce — must fund the collection, sorting, and recycling of their products through extended producer responsibility (EPR) schemes, with a deadline of 30 months from when the directive takes effect. Small enterprises, employing fewer than 10 people, will have an extra 12 months to comply.

In a direct swipe at the fast-fashion industry, negotiators agreed that ultrafast fashion business models should be taken into account when determining the financial contributions required under EPR schemes.

While there are not specified penalties for mass production of short-lifecycle clothing, the cost of compliance is expected to fall mostly on companies that flood the market with cheap disposable fashion items.

Anna Zalewska, the lead negotiator for the European parliament, said the agreement would “ensure that producers contribute to the effective separate collection of textiles they produce” while limiting administrative burdens for companies and member states.

But campaign group Zero Waste Europe said the agreement lacked teeth, arguing that the 10 per cent target for food manufacturing and processing should have been much higher, and fell well short of a UN pledge for a 50 per cent cut in food waste across the supply chain.

For ecommerce platforms, however, the deal represents a big regulatory shift. Online retailers, including those based outside the EU but selling into the bloc, will be subject to the same obligations as traditional bricks-and-mortar businesses.

This could present enforcement challenges, given the proliferation of fast-fashion platforms based in China, the UK, and the US that ship directly to European consumers.

The deal still requires formal approval from both the European parliament and the Council, but given the political backing secured in the negotiations, its adoption is expected.