France Sets Environmental Standards on Fast Fashion
The French, famous for setting fashion trends, just started a new one - imposing fees on garments that don’t meet environmental standards.
This goes beyond the ban that came into force across the European Union in July this year, prohibiting major fashion retailers, wholesalers, and apparel manufacturers from trashing unsold clothing, accessories, and footwear. They must now find ways to sell the product via discounts to consumers, alternative markets, and charity donations. That's good news because researchers estimate that hundreds of thousands of tons of fashion items are needlessly destroyed every year in the EU alone at a major cost in carbon emissions.
Now, the new move by the French government to impose environmental standards on fast fashion (which churns out cheap, synthetic garments that swiftly end up in landfill) is further upping the ante.
Under the legislation, ultra-fast fashion will be determined by three factors: the volume of products available, how much they cost, and their repairability. Fees will range from €0.50 for underwear to €12 for a coat, with the total amount capped at 50 percent of the product’s sales price.
It comes as a report reveals that the fashion industry’s already substantial emissions ballooned by 14 percent in just two years and seems to be particularly targetting online sales. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Chinese government has cried foul, claiming the legislation is designed to target Chinese e-commerce retailers, such as Shein and Temu.
On a global scale, waste from the fashion industry is responsible for 10 percent of all carbon emissions. For perspective, that is over twice the harmful emissions of the global aviation industry.
