When Everything Is Supposed to Be Fixed at Once: Why 2026 Will Be a Decisive Year for EU Textile Policy

For several years, textile policy has been framed as a question of urgency. Waste volumes continue to rise, recycling rates remain limited, global trade in used textiles is under growing scrutiny, and the environmental footprint of fashion remains high.

What now distinguishes the period ahead is that many of the political responses designed to address these challenges are set to converge within a short timeframe. From 2025 onwards, EU textile policy moves from strategy into phased regulatory implementation.

Short summary

Over the coming years, several key reforms in EU textile policy will be introduced at the same time. Extended Producer Responsibility, rising expectations for textile recycling and tighter global regulation of used textiles are all intended to accelerate the shift towards circularity. This article examines how these policy tools interact, and the risks that arise if regulation is built on simplified assumptions about how textile systems actually function.

Key takeaways:

• Multiple reforms are rolling out in parallel, making policy alignment critical.

• Second-hand markets risk being constrained despite a limited evidence base.

• Recycling is expected to deliver faster and at greater scale than current capacity allows.

• Producer responsibility may improve products, but risks mainly redistributing costs.

• EU decisions have direct impacts on global textile markets and livelihoods.

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Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) schemes for textiles are being introduced or prepared in multiple EU Member States. Expectations around textile to textile recycling capacity are increasing. At the global level, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the Basel Convention are continuing their work on how used textiles and textile waste should be classified and regulated across borders.

Individually, each of these processes is rational and grounded in legitimate concerns. Taken together, their combined effects may prove decisive.

The central question is no longer what policymakers aim to achieve, but whether the different policy instruments now being deployed will reinforce each other or risk pulling the system in conflicting directions.

EU textile policy under simultaneous pressure

The European Union has made no secret of its ambition. Textiles are identified as a priority product group in the Circular Economy Action Plan, and the EU Strategy for Sustainable and Circular Textiles sets out objectives around product design, durability, reuse, recycling and reduced environmental harm.

At the same time, policymakers are under pressure to deliver visible progress. Textile recycling is expected to scale rapidly. Producer responsibility is expected to correct structural market failures. International regulation is expected to reduce environmental harm associated with global textile flows.

What remains less clear is whether the assumptions behind these expectations fully align with how textile markets actually function in practice. As UNEP itself has noted, “the fashion and textile sector isn’t just about style; it is also the frontline against the triple planetary crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution”.

Reuse, recycling, waste management and global trade do not operate as separate policy or market systems. They are deeply interconnected. Decisions taken in one policy arena inevitably reshape outcomes in another.

The years leading up to 2026 are likely to be when these interdependencies become increasingly difficult to ignore.

Four questions that will shape the period ahead

1. Is second hand trade an asset or a problem to be controlled?

Second-hand clothing has moved from the margins to the centre of the textile policy debate. For some, it represents one of the most effective forms of circularity, extending product lifetimes, reducing demand for new production and providing access to affordable clothing across many markets.

At the same time, a dominant narrative has emerged in which exports of used clothing to the Global South are increasingly framed as large-scale waste dumping, often presented as a primary environmental problem in itself. This framing has gained strong traction in media coverage and advocacy, despite the fact that the empirical evidence underpinning it remains limited and contested.

While there is a notable lack of comprehensive, peer-reviewed studies demonstrating systematic dumping through established second-hand trade channels, the academic research that does exist tends to describe more differentiated realities, including functioning reuse markets, multi-grade sorting systems and significant employment effects. This gap between narrative certainty and available evidence has prompted growing push-back from actors with direct operational and research experience.

Jessica Franken warns that policies built on mischaracterisation risk undermining systems that already deliver environmental and social value.

In open communications to UNEP and the Basel Convention, industry organisations and researchers have cautioned against treating used textiles as waste by default. Jessica Franken, Head of Government Affairs at the Secondary Materials and Recycled Textiles Association (SMART), has argued that “used textiles are not waste — they are the backbone of the global circular economy,” warning that policies built on mischaracterisation risk undermining reuse systems that already deliver environmental and social value.

Concerns have also been raised about the data foundations of current policy discussions. In an open letter submitted to UNEP in late 2024, a group of organisations and academics cautioned that regulatory conclusions risk being shaped by incomplete datasets and poorly substantiated assumptions.

As UNEP and the Basel Convention continue their deliberations, the question is therefore not simply how to prevent environmental harm, but how to ensure that policy decisions are grounded in robust evidence that reflects how second-hand trade actually functions in practice. The outcome will signal whether reuse is recognised as an evidence-supported circular strategy, or increasingly constrained by regulation driven by contested narratives.

2. Can textile recycling realistically carry the burden placed upon it?

Fibre to fibre recycling is widely presented as the future backbone of textile circularity. Policy targets, investment strategies and public narratives increasingly assume rapid scale up over the coming decade.

Progress, however, remains uneven. Technical challenges persist, feedstock quality varies significantly, and many recycling solutions are still capital intensive and limited in geographic reach. According to European recycling industry assessments, less than one percent of textile material is currently recycled back into new clothing, underlining how far current systems are from meeting rising expectations (EuRIC Textiles Manifesto).

If reuse channels are restricted while recycling capacity does not expand as anticipated, a gap emerges. That gap risks being filled not by circular solutions, but by increased incineration or disposal.

The question for the coming years is whether policy expectations are calibrated to technical maturity and market realities, or whether they are running ahead of what existing infrastructure can deliver.

3. Will Extended Producer Responsibility change products or mainly redistribute costs?

Extended Producer Responsibility schemes for textiles are now moving from policy design into early stages of implementation in several European countries. In principle, well designed schemes can shift incentives upstream by rewarding durability, repairability and recyclability.

Poorly designed schemes, however, risk functioning primarily as cost recovery mechanisms, with limited influence on product design, production volumes or material choices.

As EPR systems roll out, their interaction with reuse markets, collection systems and recycling infrastructure will be critical. Whether they meaningfully steer behaviour or mainly add administrative and financial friction should become clearer as schemes mature.

4. Who sets the rules and on whose terms?

Perhaps the most sensitive question is also the most structural.

Global textile flows connect producers, consumers, collectors, traders and recyclers across continents. When rules governing these flows change, the distribution of costs, risks and decision making power also shifts.

Policies developed in the Global North, even when driven by environmental objectives, can reshape markets in the Global South in profound ways. Whether this leads to environmental improvement, market disruption or unintended social consequences depends on how inclusive, evidence based and context aware those rules are.

This tension between preventing environmental harm and respecting economic and social realities is likely to sit at the centre of global textile governance debates in the years ahead.

When well intended policies collide

There is a growing risk that policies which appear coherent in isolation may work against each other in practice.

Restricting reuse while relying heavily on recycling. Promoting circularity while increasing administrative barriers to circular trade. Targeting waste outcomes without adequately addressing overproduction upstream.

None of these outcomes are inevitable. Avoiding them requires a willingness to test assumptions, question simplified narratives and align policy tools with how textile systems actually operate.

The period around 2026 is unlikely to be decisive because of a single regulation or technological breakthrough. It is more likely to be decisive because the cumulative effects of multiple policy choices begin to materialise across markets, infrastructure and livelihoods.

A period that demands scrutiny rather than slogans

The textile sector does not suffer from a lack of ambition. It faces the risk of oversimplification.

As strategies translate into binding rules and intentions into obligations, the margin for error narrows. What matters now is not how forcefully problems are framed, but how carefully solutions are constructed.

This makes the coming years a period that demands close scrutiny of data, assumptions and power dynamics, rather than quick conclusions.

In the coming period, Reuse News will examine these developments in depth.

Because when everything is expected to be fixed at once, getting the fundamentals wrong can be costly.

Written by

Thomas Lundkvist