Eunomia EPR Report Launch Event: What You Need to Know

The importance of waste management schemes, especially those focusing on highly-polluting industries such as the textile sector, cannot be overstated when it comes to advancing Europe’s green transition. As the block strives to achieve its sustainability goals, the need to address the significant environmental impacts created at the end-of-life stage of textile products support the demands for new ways to make producers accountable for where their goods end up.

The Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) legislation is one of the EU’s most impactful initiatives in driving a circular economy. It has been a subject of scrutiny and debate by environmental experts, policymakers and NGOs.

Possibly the most anticipated discussion regarding the future of the EU’s EPR policy, Eunomia‘s EPR report will be published during a launch event in early June. Although some of the document’s findings can already be foreseen, stakeholders should not underestimate the potential of this occasion for influencing what the final legislation will include. So let’s have a look at what we already know about the EPR report and what you can expect from the upcoming launch event.

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About the Event

Eunomia Research & Consulting is recognised for its extensive expertise in waste management and recycling.

Eunomia’s newest report will be presented at a launch event on 6 June, at the Renaissance Hotel in Brussels, hosting policymakers, environmental experts and industry leaders.

During the event, Eunomia will present their findings, which will be followed by a Q&A panel with policymakers and will give stakeholders the opportunity to share how harmonisation of EPR rules at EU level is both key from a sustainability perspective but also in the view of business implementation and system effectiveness.

The event will also feature a keynote speech from MEP Pernille Weiss.

The Current State of EU EPR Policy and The Eunomia Report

As mentioned within the EU Textile Strategy, the EPR rules for textiles should transfer the responsibility of waste management from governments and citizens to the product manufacturers. Among other positive outcomes, it will promote innovation, incentivising manufacturers to develop sustainable products, in line with ecodesign requirements under the Ecodesign Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR) and the adoption of circular business models.

However, as it stands, each country within the EU is free to develop and implement its own EPR rules, which cannot only challenge businesses that operate across multiple EU markets but also create a wide range of inconsistencies that ultimately reduce the efficiency of the EPR initiative itself. We covered this in our recent article on the potentials and challenges of the EPR.

While the full content of Eunomia’s EPR report will only be known after the launch event in Brussels, it is safe to say that those inconsistencies and the need for policy harmonisation will be highlighted in the document.

We expect that the main message of the report and consequently also of the launch event, will be that establishing a set of mandatory EPR rules to be applied across all 27 Member States is essential in shifting the European textile industry towards a circular economy.

A number of countries within the block have already started to implement their versions of the EPR, and the difference between the policies are currently causing the fragmentation of the EU Single Market.

In France, for example, footwear goods fall under the scope of EPR rules but in the Netherlands they are excluded. The French EPR policy also determines that eco-modulation should ultimately be approved by the government, while in Sweden and in the Netherlands it will be decided by national producer responsibility organisations (PRO).

Reporting requirements also vary greatly between Member States, meaning that companies will be obligated to provide a different report to each EU country in which they operate, in order to comply with local EPR regulations.

The harmonisation of EPR rules throughout the European Union is critical to creating an efficient secondary raw material market in the block. It is an important measure not only from a sustainability perspective, but also to support business implementation and guarantee system effectiveness.

Naturally, such challenges are already under the European Commission’s radar, and the institution has already expressed an intention to address the subject of EPR rule harmonisation when reviewing the Waste Framework Directive (WFD), which we highly welcome.

Want someone with deep experience and connections in the EU to help guide your sustainability strategy? Get in touch!

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