A recent LinkedIn post by the European Commission has triggered a lively discussion about how Europeans manage their old clothes, just days after the implementation of the revised EU Waste Framework Directive.

A group of members of the European Parliament is pressing the European Commission to take immediate and decisive action to curb the rise of ultra-fast fashion in the EU market. In a priority question, MEPs from the PPE group ask how the Commission plans to use trade and regulatory tools to protect Member States from unfair competition and non-compliant textiles.

The collection of clothes and textiles has quickly become a logistical and economic trial for many actors in Europe. Two of the largest operators in Germany have filed for insolvency, and collection organizations in Sweden are struggling to keep operations running. "It's a system on the brink of collapse," says Cristofer Ståhlgren and Lars Råsberg from Human Bridge, Sweden's largest collector of used clothes. "Is this really what they intended?" they ask. Human Bridge has agr

When the EU decided that all member states must start collecting textiles separately by 2025, the aim was clear: to reduce one of the most environmentally harmful waste streams and create conditions for reuse and recycling. But the first attempts in several countries have backfired massively and actually worsened the problem. At the same time there is a constant push for the false narrative about textile waste from second-hand export to African countries. This obscures the vi