Effective Legislative Solutions Needed to Put Fashion Industry on a More Sustainable Track

Instead of addressing the root of the problem such as phasing out their addiction to synthetics, fashion brands are turning to greenwashing tactics such as increasing the use of recycled polyester. Today, 99% of recycled polyester comes from downcycling PET (polyethylene terephthalate) bottles—meaning that brands rely on the waste of another sector instead of dealing with its own waste.

Moreover, clothes made from PET bottles cannot be recycled back to new clothes and are destined for landfill. Roughly 81% of brands in our research have set targets to increase their recycled synthetic content, namely polyester. This false solution is boosted by voluntary initiatives such as the Textile Exchange’s 2025 Recycled Polyester Challenge, which aim to increase the industry share of recycled polyester from the current average of 14% to 45% by 2025.

Another incentive for brands to increase their share of recycled synthetics may also be companies’ climate targets. While recycled polyester requires 59% less energy to produce, but still more than cotton, it emits less carbon dioxide than its virgin counterpart. However, these figures do not consider the impacts of the original virgin plastic bottle production.

Last, in the absence of commercial scale fibre-to-fibre technologies and lack of incentives from regulators to invest in truly circular solutions, recycled polyester provides an easy solution for brands to say they are doing something to deal with their synthetics problem. 

For too long, certification and membership in voluntary initiatives has been the only option for fashion brands and retailers to address the environmental and social impacts of the fashion industry.  As the number of voluntary initiatives in the sector increased over the last five years, it appears that the industry is addressing concerns regarding sustainability. However, our research found that voluntary approach has fundamentally failed to create progress or enhance sustainability in the sector and may even be serving to block systemic action by presenting the illusion that change is happening.

Findings of our report Licence to Greenwash show that some of the biggest schemes, including WRAP and the Sustainable Apparel Coalition (SAC), are helping to cement the fashion industry’s reliance on fossil fuels, and are largely silent on the issue of fast fashion. Many are focused on what garments are made from, but completely ignore how many pieces are made annually. Moreover, the level of influence exercised by fashion brands in these initiatives and the lack of any independent oversight, inevitably means that they end up promoting industry interests. Most of the voluntary schemes were not able to claim transformational change and have publicly acknowledged lack of substantive achievement or missed environmental targets, despite years of operation.

The slow pace of change on social and environmental issues indicates a failure of a decades long experiment in voluntary sustainability and self-regulation that have for so long provided a smokescreen for the fashion industry. It is more evident than ever that the fashion industry’s plastic problem, waste and climate crisis needs a long-overdue injection of legislation.

The EU Textile Strategy and the regulation that will follow represent an important opportunity to put fossil fashion in reverse by slowing down runaway consumption and decouple fashion from fossil fuels. Surprisingly, fashion brands show significant levels of support for several of the policies that were proposed in the EU Textiles Strategy; with large majority of brands in favour of polluter pay principle which would be enforced through the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR), of strong legislation to put an end to greenwashing and regulation on supply chain transparency.

The resounding support for legislation signals that even even brands think time is running out on self-regulation and the oversight of the sector needs to be placed in the hands of policymakers. It is now up to the latter to step up and find effective legislative solutions to put the fashion industry on a more sustainable track.