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After several years of fierce debate, lobbying and fine-tuning, the European Union (EU) has at last adopted the final text for its extended producer responsibility (EPR) legislation, which promises to curb textile waste and make producers pay for how it is collected, sorted and recycled.
As ever with the EU, passing legislation is a long process that requires a lot of back and forth between various parties. It is also only the beginning, and there are still lots of details to be ironed out. The European Parliament finally adopted the text on Tuesday, after the European Council agreed to proposed amendments earlier this summer. On Wednesday, both signed the updated text, kick-starting a roughly 20-day process during which the legislation will enter into force. Once it has been published in the EU Official Journal — which is expected to happen in early October, but could be any day now — the rules will officially apply.
However, producers — which means brands and retailers, rather than the suppliers actually producing clothes on their behalves — won’t be on the hook for a while. Once the legislation enters into force, each EU member state will have 20 months to “transpose” the rules into national legislation, either amending their existing waste rules or creating new ones. Within 30 months — which takes us to April 2028 — each member state will have to establish its own EPR scheme (or multiple schemes) to actually enforce the legislation.
In the meantime, each member state has to work out exactly how much they want to charge producers (there are no minimums or maximums), and what they want their local EPR schemes to look like. The EU has issued limited guidance on this front, but member states are encouraged to charge companies based on how much they sell in that country, and they are allowed to charge more if a business fails to meet certain environmental or social criteria, or if its business model could be described as fast fashion. It’s also worth noting that most aren’t starting from scratch: the separate collection of textiles has already been mandatory in EU states since the beginning of 2025, and countries including France and the Netherlands already have EPR schemes in place.
While the fees likely won’t apply for a while, brands will need to get their ducks in a row. Producers need a legal entity or representative everywhere their products are sold, and they will be charged in every country they sell into, meaning brands could be charged multiple times. Micro-enterprises will have an extra year to comply — the EU said they are not the main contributors and therefore not the main targets — but they won’t be exempt entirely. If they were, larger businesses could attempt to fracture their sales figures and side-step larger fees. There are some exemptions, however, including self-employed tailors producing custom garments and businesses selling secondhand or entirely upcycled garments. A few grey areas remain around the use of recycled content and deadstock, but it’s likely that these will still be charged as the products in question will need handling at the end-of-life stage.