“One Year of Textile Waste Separate Collection”. The EU Needs to Smooth the Path to Enable a Circular Textile Industry

On 29 January Municipal Waste Europe, hosted by the Committee of the Regions (CoR), gathered municipalities, textile value chain actors and policymakers for a half a day to discuss on textile waste, from its present challenges to a circular future.

Opening the keynote speeches, Marieke Schouten, Member of the CoR and Co-chair of the Zero Pollution Stakeholder Platform, emphasised the need to reduce the current textile production and specifically textiles with harmful chemicals coming from the plastics sector.

Luca Menessini, Member of the CoR and Rapporteur of the EU Strategy for Sustainable and Circular Textiles hosted the event. Menessini remarked the overproduction of textiles and regretted the lack of measures taken by the Commission to support textile circularity "The effectiveness of local systems remains a challenge; if we want to encourage a circular transition, the total cost of collection, separation and recycling needs to be manageable. The Commission was expected to provide guidance to develop a local waste management, but so far there has been no concrete help from the EU on how to organise successful and inclusive collection system”.

Rasmus Nordqvist, Member of the European Parliament and shadow rapporteur for the MFF and the upcoming Industrial Accelerator Act, targeted the price of virgin materials and urged for the introduction of plastics and chemicals in the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM). Regulations are not enough and suggested the introduction of financial measures to make circular businesses profitable, competitive and predictable. In line with the Clean Industrial Deal and the upcoming Circular Economy Act, Rasmus Nordqvist considers that Europe needs to scale up its circular textile sector in order to guarantee a stable textile market and an international standing to make the business case.

The first panel discussion "State of Play – One Year of Textile Waste Separate Collection” gathered Municipal Waste Europe, RREUSE, Recycling Europe and Euratex to deliver their overview on the current crisis around used textiles and potential solutions to relieve it. Federico Foschini, President of MWE opened the discussion by underscoring the one-year of the mandatory separate collection of textile waste in the Waste Framework Directive (WFD):  

"Today we celebrate the first anniversary of the mandatory separate collection of textiles, but if we look back, it has been 10 years since the circular economy started to roll out at European level, when the Action Plan was published, we have built experience of where the important dossiers are, how to adopt the best tools for material flow and instruments like CBAM and other measures to reflect on how certain legislation have improved circularity."

The panellists agreed that 2025 was a bleak year marked by the ultra-fast fashion. The overwhelming production of cheap and poor-quality textiles flooding the EU market has imposed enormous burden on municipalities, challenging their budget. The reuse sector, particularly social enterprises active in collection, sorting and sales of second-hand textiles, has been hit in the last years. Recycling companies are under pressure due to market constraints, leading them to bankruptcy. And the European textile industry struggles with unfair competition from non-EU players.

During the negotiations of the WFD revision in 2025, many municipalities expected financial cost coverage of waste management through EPR implementation, however changes in the legislation delayed the EPR implementation responsibility until late 2028. Panellists urged for a fast implementation and weighed in EPR governance. MWE and Recycling Europe advocate in having non-for-profit Producer Responsibility Organisations (PRO).

On policy recommendations all panellists agreed to speed up the adoption of an EU-wide end-of-waste criteria for textiles, Ecodesign rules and supportive market measures for reusable textiles and recycled fibres. RREUSE and Recycling Europe stated that the waste hierarchy needs to be followed by prioritising incentives to reuse, preparation-for-reuse and recycled fibres (e.g by reducing VAT, introducing repair bonus and implementing EU-wide ecomodulation criteria) in order to make them more competitive than virgin materials.

The last panel session "Municipalities in Action – Good Practices and Barriers”, moderated by Corina Andrea Murafa Benga, NAT and TEN sections from the European Economic and Social Committee, presenting best practices put forward by inter-municipal companies from Portugal, Finland and Austria.

Filipe Carneiro, Head of the Division for Operational Project Implementation Support for LIPOR, Porto, Portugal, presented their textile waste sorting plant, a European funded project capable to categorise textiles in more than 40 different groups and arranged by colour and composition. The project offers comprehensive data of consumers textile waste and the categorised materials ready to be used for recycling, however, despite the sorting and data, the work becomes ineffective as there is no market to close the textiles loop. Filipe Carneiro recognises that EPR will not be enough to shape the market and suggested that imposing EU recycled content targets would render to boost market up-take of sorted textiles. Carneiro warns that if the problem persists, citizens will lose trust in separate collection schemes for textiles as so far most of the fraction has no recycling and market alternative beyond incineration or landfill.

Aki Honkanen, Project Manager of the Finnish Public Waste Management Company Lounais-Suomen Jätehuolto Oy (LSJH), presented their development of national collection of textile waste. Finland started textile separate collection nation-wide in 2021, three years before the EU mandate. Three years later, the infrastructure covered 98% of the Finish population. However, in 2025, separate collection dramatically decreased to less than 50% of the population due to the legal uncertainty caused by the ongoing revision of the WFD, the lack of market demand for recycled fibres, and the increase in collection and storage costs. Honkanen considered necessary to harmonised the interpretation of the green list under the Waste Shipment Regulation for textiles, adopt an Eu-wide end-of-waste criteria for textiles and to implement an EPR that covers the real costs of collection and sorting taking into consideration the density of the population.

Christian Ehrengruber, CEO Landes-Abfallverwertungsunternehmen GmbH (LAVU), Public Waste Management Company, Upper Austria, gave an overview of the logistics in the civic amenity sites, in which the company is able to sort and collect 100 different waste fractions. Austria has been collecting textile waste since 1988. In 2025, the company reused 90% of the pre-sorted waste and 10% went for recycling. Ehrengruber highlighted the importance to create logistic systems to facilitate the transport of secondary raw materials. Within this waste management scale, LAVU is developing a cooperative circular economy project for enzymatic fibre recycling of textile and improvement of collection and reuse of textiles.

 

Press Release | Brussels, 3 February 2026 

 

Find here the original publication

More news:

Kanadevia Inova Awarded Contract for Wet AD Plant in Sicily

New Data Reveal the Extent of Europe’s E-Waste Crisis, NGOs Call for Urgent Action

50 Cities for Climate Action: Avoiding and Adapting to a 50°C World

Commission’s Circular Economy Act risks missing the point, EEB warns – and the clock is ticking

Kanadevia Hands Over the New Rivenhall Integrated Waste Management Facility to Indaver

ESWET Welcomes AccelerateEU: Waste-to-Energy Key to Energy Security and District Heating Expansion

Germany and Brazil Deepen Successful Cooperation on Environmental Protection and Climate Action

Kanadevia Inova Receives PAC for kenova Emmenspitz Waste-to-Energy Plant

EU Reinforces the Stability and Predictability of its Carbon Market

Food Waste in Focus as the World Marks the International Day Of Zero Waste