The cross-party Environmental Audit Committee released a report this week (19th February 2019) calling on Government to make fashion retailers take responsibility for the waste they create. The report proposes a one penny producer responsibility charge per item of clothing and incentives for companies that offer garment repair services.
The Committee’s key recommendations include:
- Mandatory environmental targets for fashion retailers with a turnover above £36 million;
- A new Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) scheme to reduce textile waste with a one penny charge per garment on producers;
- The scheme should reward fashion companies that design products with lower environmental impacts and penalise those that do not.
- The report calls on the Government to use the tax system to shift the balance of incentives in favour of reuse, repair and recycling to support responsible fashion companies.
- The Government should follow Sweden’s lead and reduce VAT on repair services.
- Lessons on designing, creating, mending and repairing clothes should be in the school curriculum
- The Government should publish a publicly accessible list of retailers required to release a modern slavery statement. This should be supported by an appropriate penalty for those companies who fail to report and comply with the Modern Slavery Act.
- The fashion industry must come together to set out their blueprint for a net zero emissions world, reducing their carbon consumption back to 1990 levels.
Environmental Audit Committee Chair Mary Creagh MP said: “Fashion shouldn’t cost the earth. Our insatiable appetite for clothes comes with a huge social and environmental price tag: carbon emissions, water use, chemical and plastic pollution are all destroying our environment.
“In the UK we buy more clothes per person than any other country in Europe. ‘Fast fashion’ means we over-consume and under use clothes. As a result, we get rid of over a million tonnes of clothes, with £140m worth going to landfill, every year.
“Fashion retailers must take responsibility for the clothes they produce. That means asking producers to consider and pay for the end of life process for their products through a new Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) scheme. The Government must act to end the era of throwaway fashion by incentivising companies that offer sustainable designs and repair services. Children should be taught the joy of making and mending clothes in school as an antidote to anxiety and the mental health crisis in teenagers. Consumers must play their part by buying less, mending, renting and sharing more.”
FTA and Fashion Enter Ltd CEO, Jenny Holloway, responded that not all Fast Fashion manufacturers should be tarred with the same brush: “I am ALL for ethical production. We run a totally transparent factory in the UK that has a leading status in the Fast Forward Audit and is SMETA approved. We are proud to make so-called ‘Fast Fashion’ because this means speed-to-market, i.e. 2-3 weeks lead-time from design concept to delivery; it does not mean THROW AWAY fashion. Fast Fashion also means less quantity bought so the garment sells out at full price; the intake margin may cost more but the exit margin will be higher because there is no discounting. People respect garments longer that are not on sale.
“It’s insulting to retailers and manufacturers alike to discuss a tax on garments sold especially as the issue here really is focused on certain etailers paying unworkable cost prices for garments. The Home Office is right with their concept of naming and shaming etailers who work unethically and use factories that coerce their labour force to accept less than the minimum pay and long hours. Find that evidence through enforcement agencies then fine those etailers with their bumper profits made by the sweat of hard labour right here in the UK!”