Hybrid Event: EPR for circularity: towards a more sustainable EU textile sector

• Please register here for physical participation to the event. 
• Please register here for online participation to the event.

Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) is one of the key policies to implement the obligation to separately collect textile waste for EU Member States as of 2025. EPR schemes oblige producers to contribute to a more effective end-of-life phase of products and cover the costs of waste management. It is an important tool to ensure the reduction of the environmental impact of textiles, promote circularity, and contribute to more efficient end-of-life management.

To ensure an effective implementation of EPR schemes, it is necessary to reach a common understanding of a few key issues: what are the current barriers to the widespread practice of circularity in textiles; what are the costs for the industry to transition towards a circular economy; and what are the necessary organizational changes.  

Indeed, EPR should look beyond waste management costs that may support local or short-term needs, but lack a vision towards the overarching objective of enabling circularity in line with the European Green Deal and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

The Horizon Europe project CISUTAC aims to remove current bottlenecks in textile management to increase the circular use of textiles in the EU, and to minimise the environmental impact of the sector. CISUTAC’s vision on EPR proposes a set of guiding principles for an EU-wide textiles EPR that supports the transition to a circular economy. Within CISUTAC, partners are working towards developing a shared vision on strategies for a more circular and sustainable EU textile sector, which will be used to advise the project on strategic directions, to identify relevant innovation gaps and possible solutions emerging from CISUTAC. The vision will be based on an assessment of EU developments and national measures enabling circularity, and will cover ten key elements including, among others, waste prevention and reduction, product eco-design, reuse and repair, green public procurement and consumer dimension.

The purpose of the event is to enable a constructive dialogue between project partners, policy makers and other relevant stakeholders on the key topic of EPR, contributing to the policy debate on the recently published proposal for revision of the Waste Framework Directive.

The event will provide a platform for CISUTAC to present its vision on EPR and generate awareness raising on the importance of EPR for circularity, followed by an exchange of views on opportunities and challenges with setting up environmentally effective EPR schemes and advancing harmonised implementation across EU Member States.