This research project lists ecodesign criteria for circular fashion and textiles.
It focused on giving consumer textiles a longer lifespan with optimal reuse potential, making disassembly and recovery possible, and exploring upcycling and high-quality recycling. Extending the life of textile products turned out to have the greatest impact in the short term. Quality seems to be the most impactful ecodesign criterion when it comes to improving the sustainability and circularity of consumer textiles as quickly as possible.
The project defined seven product categories, identifying a set of minimum criteria for each. The report looks at existing labels, standards and regulations and the authors hope it will help expand the Ecodesign Directive by adding a textile category.
The EU-funded Fashion For Change 2022 Accelerator Programme aims to support designers, innovators and startups from the European textiles and fashion industry in this transition. Applicants are invited to team up and submit their proposals for the Accelerator Open Call by 19 April.
The Italian Cartiera is an ethical fashion workshop founded in Lama di Reno, Marzabotto, in 2017 which makes leather and fabric items.
Believing strongly that work is an extraordinary tool for social inclusion, Cartiera offers paths for employment and integration of disadvantaged people, mainly refugees and asylum seekers.
Recovo is a B2B platform located in Spain which specialises in selling on deadstock fabric which would otherwise be classified as textile waste.
The platform helps EU-based brands and suppliers to give a second life to unused fabric. This reduces the amount of resources needed to meet buyers' needs and cuts down on waste.
Recovo uploads photos and information on fabric remnants put up for sale by producers which can then earn money from products rather than paying for waste disposal. Buyers can order samples, then buy as much of the fabric as they want which is delivered straight to them. Recovo ships within the EU, and most vendors are located in Europe, specifically Spain and Portugal.
A user-friendly platform promoting circularity and combating waste!
Clear Fashion, independant expert of garment evaluation, is a solution that informs consumers on brands' practices and clothes' impact, and enables fashion brands to communicate their scores, in order to bring more transparency in the fashion industry.
At a moment when the EU stakeholders hold their breath for the EU Textiles strategy to be published, this workshop aims to give a final signal to the policy makers that a high level of ambition needs to be maintained in the upcoming proposal in order to create a watershed moment for the textile production and consumption, and more importantly for its global impact on the society and environment.
