Europeans’ booming appetite for fast fashion, fuelled by online shopping, is putting huge pressure on the environment, says a report by the European Union’s (EU) European Environment Agency (EEA), with new figures showing that EU citizens are buying more textiles than ever before by shopping online, especially cheaper clothes, on Monday, the 24th of March, reports Politico.
The report comes as EU authorities finalise new rules on textile management across Europe, which will require fashion brands to pay a fee to recycle their products when they become waste, to encourage fashion brands to sell more sustainable and longer-lasting products.
In 2022, the EU imported 11 million tonnes of textiles. Clothing accounted for 45% of imports, household textiles 21%, footwear 17% and other textiles 12%. Most imports came from China, Bangladesh and Turkey, with a total value of 153 billion euros, the report said.
THE EU RESIDENTS IN 2022 EACH BOUGHT ABOUT 19KG OF NEW CLOTHING, FOOTWEAR AND OTHER TEXTILES, COMPARED WITH 17KG IN 2019. BUT EACH EUROPEAN ALSO TRASHED UP TO 16KG OF CLOTHES EACH YEAR.
This generated around seven million metric tonnes of textile waste across the bloc: enough to fill one large suitcase for every European every year.
The report points out that 85% of these discarded clothes are not reused or recycled and often are burned or end up in landfills. To prevent this, EU countries must introduce separate collection systems for textile waste from January.
By 2030, the EU wants all textiles placed on the EU market to be durable, repairable and recyclable.
The EEA report notes that online sales and social media have “contributed significantly to the spread of fast fashion in recent years”, allowing retailers to “constantly offer consumers new styles at extremely low prices”.
Without the opportunity to try before they buy, people are more likely to buy multiple sizes of the same item and choose to return, resell or even throw away items that do not fit them.
However, on average up to 44% of returned goods never reach a new customer and are destroyed.
More money is spent on clothing and footwear than on most other products bought by European households. It is the fifth largest category after goods such as food, gas, electricity and health products.
According to the report, 234 million tonnes of raw materials such as fuel and cotton were used to produce all the textiles consumed by EU households. However, this is much less than in 2010, suggesting that fewer resources are needed per item of clothing.