ECOS | Environmental Coalition on Standards

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Circular economy & sustainable products

Textiles

The textile sector is linear, short-term focused, and heavily reliant on fossil fuels. Textile production causes air, water, and soil pollution and is a significant driver of climate change, biodiversity loss, and damage to ecosystems and human health. In recent decades the global production of clothing has increased significantly and is still growing, accelerated by a trend of ‘buy-use-throw away’ – increasing waste and the volume of unsold textiles, which are often destroyed. This exacerbates the sector’s negative impacts on both people and the planet, which disproportionally affects vulnerable stakeholders. Our vision is to limit the negative impacts of textile products on the environment and bring the textile sector back within planetary boundaries.

What we are working on

ECOS works to ensure that relevant EU and international policies and standards support:

  • Sufficiency – the textile sector must reduce the absolute use of resources and its material and consumption footprint.
  • Circular design – textiles must be more durable, reusable, repairable, non-toxic, and produced with zero pollution targets.
  • Sustainable value chains – reduce the global negative environmental impacts of sourcing and unsold textiles, and produce new textile products by preventing and limiting air, water, and soil pollution as well as waste generation.
Who we work with

Alliances and campaigns

Related news

  • Ecodesign: A more sustainable EU single market is coming

    Ecodesign, an EU success story, is expanding. More products than ever will soon be designed from the outset with sustainability in mind — a development that will be good for the environment and consumers. But how? And when? The Ecodesigned4LIFE project consortium, ECOS, BEUC, and ANEC, break it down.

  • Call for experts – Chemicals in textiles

    ECOS is seeking experts on chemicals in textiles to represent and defend environmental interests in the development of standards and related policies. Our experts provide us with technical and scientific input and represent ECOS in standardisation processes and multi-stakeholder discussions.

  • Ecodesign: The EU’s journey to sustainable products begins now

    Ecodesign is one of the EU’s crowning achievements, making products more sustainable by ensuring environmental impacts are considered from the outset. The Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR) will make this a reality for more products than ever. What will happen in 2025? How will this framework be implemented? How can every product become sustainable by default?

Contact person
Luca Boniolo
Programme Manager luca.boniolo@ecostandard.org

ECOS is co-funded by the European Commission and EFTA Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or EISMEA. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.

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