(GUF) FRANCE - LEADING THE WAY IN TEXTILES RECYCLING

picture - a typical French man - link

As Europe marches toward a circular economy, textiles are finally under the spotlight. The EU’s Circular Economy Action Plan (CEAP) wants your jeans to last longer, be easier to recycle, and not end their life incinerated in a far-off land. One of the centrepieces of this textile transformation is Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) - making producers financially responsible for the full lifecycle of what they sell.

France has been well ahead of the curve with a national EPR scheme for textiles in place since 2007. While the EU is still ironing out its harmonised model, France is already collecting, sorting, and assigning eco-modulated fees based on how “circular” a product is. 

Under the French system, companies placing textiles, footwear, or household linens on the market must:

• Register with Refashion, the national eco-organisation
• Pay eco-contributions based on product type and volume
• See their fees adjusted (eco-modulated) based on design - the more recyclable, the less the fee

Refashion then funds a national network of collection points, sorting centres, and recycling or reuse initiatives. Unlike the UK’s PRN/PERN system, where producers purchase tradable compliance notes, France’s model is centralised and fee-based; significantly simpler and arguably a lot smarter than the UK's scheme.

Regrettably, like the UK's PERN waste export Issue, out of sight still counts as out of system with a large chunk of collected textiles in France ending up being exported for reuse, often to African, Asian, or Eastern European markets. While it’s technically reuse, in reality, many items are unsellable and are dumped or burned. Further downsides of mass export are:-

• Local industries in importing countries are undercut by free or near-free foreign textiles.
• Domestic recycling and repair infrastructure in France is underfunded or underused.
• Circularity becomes geographically outsourced, with little visibility on the end-of-life outcome.

In the UK, under the packaging compliance system, a tonne recycled is worth a similar amount in compliance terms as one exported to a developing nation. That parity has led to widespread criticism, market distortion, and mass greenwashed nonsense.

In France however, the approach is different. All tonnes are currently counted, but there’s a strong policy push to favour domestic treatment, increasing scrutiny of export flows and early signals that future subsidies or incentives may be weighted to support local recycling more than exports so while exported tonnes still "count" in France, the political and environmental narrative is shifting to local is best, traceability matters, and not all reuse is created equal.

If we want a genuinely circular textile economy, then simply shuffling our waste off to other countries isn’t going to cut it. France’s EPR scheme is leading the way, but it’s clear that the EU and the UK, (should it ever get round to implementing a proper textile EPR) needs to grapple with some uncomfortable truths:

• Transparency over where waste really ends up
• Accountability for exported materials
• Real investment in local recycling innovation and jobs

The bottom line is; not all tonnes are created equal and if the goal is circularity, we need to stop treating the world like one giant laundry basket for our unwanted clothes. More like this (textiles) - link - more like this (France) - link - more like this (EPR) - link