The European Union Law Working Group and the Environmental Law and Governance Working Group are hosting a presentation.
In the era of (ultra) fast-fashion, trendy, affordable and ready-to-wear-once styles pop up faster than ever before. Given the high environmental and social costs of the industry, it is time for transformative change. The European Union envisions to bring fast fashion out of fashion by advancing the transition towards a circular textile economy.
The textile industry is the fourth-largest emitter of greenhouse gas emissions and accounts for 20 % of global wastewater, which makes it one of the most polluting industries in the world. At the same time, phenomena linked to climate change, such as flooding and extreme heat, threaten the workers in apparel production centres that are situated in some of the most climate-vulnerable countries. A structural shift towards a sustainable textile industry is, therefore, long overdue to bring an end to these environmental and social impacts. It is no longer a discussion whether the industry has to change or whether the market provides unwanted effects, but rather in which direction the industry should be transformed. As set out in the EU Strategy on Sustainable and Circular Textiles, the EU aims to provide an answer to these challenges by transforming the textile industry from a linear to a circular economy.
Central to the strategy is the notion of value. One of the main differences between a linear and a circular economy is that the value of materials and resources is preserved for as long as possible in form of functional products to reduce dependencies on virgin raw materials. To that end, the relationship between the producer, product, and consumer becomes crucial. Three key legal acts touch upon this relationship and its interactions: the Ecodesign Regulation, the Waste Framework Directive and the Right to Repair Directive. The presentation will outline the emergence and main features of circular textile instruments linked to the relationship between production and the consumer in the circular economy. This includes tracing the evolution within this field from linear to circular legislation.
Legal systems can support new ways of organising market-based activity to facilitate circular objectives. Central question to the presentation is how European law can create an environment that is friendly to circular value creation while hostile to linear practices. The co-constitutive role of law in the transformation of markets is central to the research. To that end, the presentation will examine the different roles of law, from facilitative to constitutive, in transforming the market. The interactions on the market can be guided by law in such a way that circular actions can be preferred over linear ones. This way, economic actors such as consumers are enabled to create value. As an example, markets can be reconfigured to encourage circular practices such as repair. Taking a legal institutionalist perspective, the presentation aims to explore how through circular legislation specific types of values are ‘coded’ or ‘encased’.
Register