creating a circular approach to fashion across europe

Creating a circular approach to fashion across Europe

Ministry of Infrastructure and EnvironmentBarbara van Offenbeek-Kuipers

Photo Credit: Charity Fashion Live, Rachel Manns (Photographer)

EU Life project - Creating a circular approach to fashion across Europe.

European Clothing Action Plan (ECAP)

Creating a circular approach to fashion across Europe

European Clothing Action Plan (ECAP)

Creating a circular approach to fashion across Europe

Creating a circular approach to fashion across Europe

Objective - to adopt a circular approach across Europe to achieve:

(2015 baseline)

ECAP Targets

Creating a circular approach to fashion across Europe

• Reduce clothing footprint and potential cost savings• Support environmental targets• Receive advice/ tools • Become a leader and join a European network• Work collaboratively

Why get involved - business benefits?

Creating a circular approach to fashion across Europe

• Public procurers are able to take a key role in the development of sustainable workwear.

• Setting an example to other buyers and contribute to reducing the environmental impact of clothes.

The role of public procurement in getting textiles in Europe more sustainable and circular.

Creating a circular approach to fashion across Europe

Actions ECAP; Public Procurement

• Market report on European workwear-sector and the organization of public procurement in Europe

• Develop criteria for procurement of workwear• Organize 5 masterclasses in Europe for suppliers and

procurers of workwear• Develop and share knowledge to stimulate sustainable

workwear

Creating a circular approach to fashion across Europe

• Context of workwear within European Union

• Identifies challenges and opportunities for public sector procurement to contribute to a more circular European economy

• Recommends next steps for public procurers to stimulate circularity in workwear

Market report on workwear

Creating a circular approach to fashion across Europe

Workwear Procurement

€8.6 billion of contract awards for textiles and workwear were made across the EU28 countries in 2015

Service TED Value (€) percent

Education 12,812,366 0.1% Social services 15,293,967 0.2% Energy & Water Utilities

15,075,647 0.2%

Housing 18,629,094 0.2% Environment 19,983,478 0.2% Transport utilities 42,072,974 0.5% Postal services 45,038,328 0.5% Public Order and safety

192,827,612 2.2%

Defence 230,114,384 2.7% Health 617,064,497 7.2% Other 1,514,860,723 17.6% General services 5,901,706,040 68.4%

TOTAL 8,625,479,111

Creating a circular approach to fashion across Europe

• Lack of figures on workwear waste

• Estimated 12-15% waste per annum in European countries

• Three principal routes: – commercial recycling and re-use collection;– Take-back and commercial collections and– Household waste disposal

• Once collected, its bulked with household textiles and clothing and destined for re-use and recycling abroad

Textile & workwear waste

Creating a circular approach to fashion across Europe

Why are textiles so interesting for Public Procurement?• Resource consumption

• Greenhouse gas emissions

• Air and water pollution

• Water consumption & pollution

• Toxicity issues

• Biodiversity loss and land-use

Creating a circular approach to fashion across Europe

Regulatory• EU: - Health & safety

- Hazardous (e.g. REACH)- Labour standards- Procurement practice

• National - Additional regulatory and legislative & policy requirementsEnvironmental

• EU & national legislation, regulation & policy e.g. WFD, CEPEconomic

• Cost savings•Voluntary

• Sectoral agreements

EU Regulatory drivers for workwear

Creating a circular approach to fashion across Europe

Current practice (1)

- Governmental Buying Standards (2010) > sustainable procurement is more at a voluntary best practice level. Proportion of recyceled fibres is the only explicit resource efficiency criteria

- Majority is re-use or recycled. Branded workwear (like police uniforms)has lower value due to the security requirement for shredding of branded items rather than re-use. Permanent branding is one of the barriers to closing the workwear loop.

- Economic value of used textiles lies almost entirely in the re-usable component.

- Prices for non-re-usables are low and often can’t pay for transport. > find their way to down cycling, e.g. industrial rags, low grade blankets

Creating a circular approach to fashion across Europe

Current practice (2)

- Simplify procedures and facilitate negotiations between contracting entity and bidders

- Encourage innovative solutions and alternate business models based on Life cycle costing market

- Pursue efficient procurement with low prices while supporting a competitive market.

- Certification used as minimum procurement requirements- Help companies to achieve certification for ecolabel- Pilots with circular procurement for textiles

Creating a circular approach to fashion across Europe

Current practice (3) in the Netherlands

- Governmental goals to achieve 100% sustainable procurement- Use of Category-management for procurement of several productgroups- Minimum requirements in the procurement and tender-process for product groups for

which sustainability criteria are available- Policy focused on encouraging market innovation to improve sustainability, - and targets public bodies to develop their own sustainable procurement policies and

ensure they are linked through procurement implementation- encourages functional specification- Textiles Covenant; agreements between government and textile parties to make he

Dutch textile sector more sustainable through coordination and cooperation. - Pilots to stimulate circularity in workwear

Creating a circular approach to fashion across Europe

•Rijkswaterstaat is the Dutch waterways, public works and environment authority.

•As part of a commitment by the Dutch Government to achieve maximum re-use and recycling, Rijkswaterstaat set up a pilot, within the REBus project to explore the potential for remanufacturing workwear.

•The main question was; can used clothing be ‘dematerialised’ successfully back into its component materials – and then be used to create new clothing?

•50 lock stewards were issued with caps, polo-shirts, raincoats and fleece jackets made of 100% recyclable polyester materials.

•All of the clothing was successfully recycled, although the raincoats needed additional material added for remanufacture into new items.

Pilot 1: Leasing workwear

Creating a circular approach to fashion across Europe

Pilot 2: Defending Recycling •The Royal Netherlands Ministry of Defence employs 58,800 people and utilises large volumes of textiles as uniforms and other products.

•Discarded items had been incinerated, but the ministry wanted to find a more circular way to deal with disposal and procurement.

•Following consultation with the market, the Ministry of Defence wanted to pilot with new textiles and workwear items containing recycled post-consumer textile fibres. It also sorts discarded items for re-use.

•Two contracts have been awarded for new items: one for the supply of 100.000 towels, 10.000 was cloths (containing 36% recycled post-consumer textiles fibers) and one for 53.000 overalls (containing 14% recycled post-consumer textiles fibers); A third contract deals with the sorting of 750.000 end-of-life items per year.

Creating a circular approach to fashion across Europe

Circular Procurement Principles

Creating a circular approach to fashion across Europe

Resource efficient business models

• Take- back /Lease models• Buy and sell on model• Servicisation; Product Service System, in-use impacts and end-of life

pathways can have a big influence of the overall environmental impacts.

Creating a circular approach to fashion across Europe

Stakeholders workwear in Europe• EU • National• Demand side

- Procurement- Use

• Supply side- Production- Design- Distribution- Servicing (including repair)

• Disposal- Collection- Reuse (including repurposing)- Recycling options

Creating a circular approach to fashion across Europe

Recommendations (1)

Stakeholders“big fish in a small pond” - Government procurement bodies have significant demand-pull potential within the workwear garment sectorCollective action - sectoral approaches have successfully demonstrated the potential for voluntary agreements to close material loops.Further research would be required to identify and understand better the more detailed stakeholder relationships and potential of influence across the different workwear categories.

Creating a circular approach to fashion across Europe

Recommendations (2)

Procurement

• Communicate circular ambitions to the market early to enable innovation in design, manufacture and supply (e.g. REBMs)

• Adopting national procurement strategies like a Category Plan can provide the framework, scope and scale for collaboration within the supply chain.

Creating a circular approach to fashion across Europe

Recommendations (3) Procurement

Design material choicereuse & recyclability

Tendering developing markets for recycled content

Use functional lifetime optimisationownership (REBMs)

Disposal collectionsIndustrial symbiosis

Creating a circular approach to fashion across Europe

Recommendations (4)

• The role of certification and its potential in helping to close textile loops needs to be better understood.

• Develop a European market led roadmap for circular workwear with actions, timescales, stakeholders, costs, benefits and incentives.

Creating a circular approach to fashion across Europe

Question to you all:

• Do you have any experiences you’d like to share?

• Would you like to join us and help us develop criteria for circular workwear?

•Go to our website ecap.eu.com and sign up to our project e-newsletter for updates.

•Download the report: http://www.rwsleefomgeving.nl/onderwerpen/afval/afval-nieuws/afvalnieuws/content/kansen-verduurzaming/•http://www.ECAP.eu.com > Public Procurement actions

or:•Contact: Barbara.van.offenbeek@rws.nl

Creating a circular approach to fashion across Europe

Creating a circular approach to fashion across Europe