H&M, Adidas, Inditex and Bestseller join coalition on post-consumer textile flows
“Instead of theorising for another five years while communities like Kantamanto carry an unfair burden, ARC is testing how to make globally accountable EPR a reality,” Liz Ricketts, co-founder and executive director of The Or Foundation, tells Vogue.
“Kantamanto isn’t a dumpsite, and it isn’t a perfectly functioning circular economy, but it is a place of action, ingrained knowledge, skill and possibility. Launching here sends a signal that ambitious plans for circularity must be grounded in reality.”
ARC spokesperson Hilde van Duijn, CEO of the Netherlands-based organisation Circle Economy, which will act as the coalition’s secretariat, adds, “Studies show that a majority of post-consumer textiles collected and sorted in the EU are exported beyond its borders. Even when these garments are reused or upcycled — which isn’t always the case — they ultimately become waste in the countries receiving these exports.”
According to Vogue Business, the coalition will focus on reuse, upcycling, recycling, and responsible waste management in countries that receive large volumes of exported secondhand apparel, such as Ghana, where it’s kicking things off.
Improving flows
In a statement, the coalition says it will explore how producer responsibility contributions could better reflect these flows, directing funding, inclusive governance, and shared learning toward practical support for circular pathways and responsible waste management in countries that receive exported secondhand apparel.
It will do this in three ways:
- It aims to explore how funding and practical support linked to these flows can strengthen collection, sorting, reuse, and recycling activities in recipient countries.
- As such, the coalition will test more inclusive approaches to governance, design, and implementation by bringing affected community perspectives into how priorities, activities, and learnings are shaped.
- This will generate practical learnings that may be useful to brands, PROs, policymakers, and other stakeholders working on producer responsibility for post-consumer textiles.
ESGDive reports that Adidas, H&M, Inditex, and Bestseller will make voluntary financial contributions to support these projects and boost circular-economy initiatives.