Back To Basics: Spotlight on the EU’s bid to promote Reverse Fast Fashion
In a bid to promote reverse fashion, sporting goods giant Decathlon reversed its name to "Nohltaced" (pronounced Noltakket) at three of its Belgian stores. “Bring in your sports equipment that you no longer use, and we will buy it back from you, [repair it], and make someone else happy with it,” the store said in a statement. Sounds pretty straightforward, right? The store brought back a whopping 26,000 second-hand items during its pilot phase, which got me thinking about the power of working towards an echo and circular-economy.
As the European Union (EU) states, textiles and fabrics are part of our everyday lives. What we need to take a close look at, however, is the impact of this textile use. Just earlier this year, Helen Briggs of BBC News wrote about the shocking fast fashion statistics in Europe: “For every person in the EU, textile consumption requires nine cubic metres of water, 400 square metres of land, 391kg of raw materials, and causes a carbon footprint of about 270kg.”
Furthermore, the EU says that the average European throws away 11 kg of textiles every year. To put that in perspective, let’s say one medium-sized shirt weighs around 165 grams. That would mean that the average European gets rid of – wait for it – around 67 shirts a year. Should you start your disposing habits at, let’s say, 20 years old, you would have disposed of 2010 shirts by the time you’re 50. Multiply that with the hundreds of millions of residents that live in Europe? And the word? Well, you get the picture. Worse even is that these truckloads of textiles often end up in landfills, plus the fact that the amount of wastage almost doubled between 2000 and 2015.
“The need to address the production and consumption of textiles is now more urgent than ever,” says the EU. “[Due to the] relentless expansion, negative impacts on resources, water, energy consumption, and the continued climate growth.”
The EU’s slow textile strategy
So, glooming statistics aside, what is the EU’s strategy to promote and implement better textile practices? The EU names a few, stating that these strategies propose actions for the entire lifecycle of textile products, while “supporting the ecosystem in the green and digital transitions.” Some of their strategies to improve the EU’s fashion impact on the environment are eco-design requirements for textiles, tight controls on greenwashing (when items are falsely advertised as eco-friendly), and actions to address the unintentional release of microplastics from textiles.
For a more in-depth look at fashion and the EU’s strategies, you may find this article helpful.
What are you doing to decrease the negative impact of fast fashion on the environment?
