The importance of the European Parliament’s Waste Framework Directive and France’s Extended Producer Responsibility Policy for Australia’s future in textile sustainability.

Video: Alexis Todorovski appears on TheInformer to discuss the important role the European Parliament’s Waste Directive Framework and France’s EPR policy for textiles has to play in influencing Australia’s clothing recycling rates.

Alexis Todorovski, SCRgroup’s Head of Communications and Business Development, discussed the application of The European Parliament’s Directive in the textile waste sector in France, and how this model has seen France’s clothing recycling rates triple over the span of 10 years. It calls on all levels of government; from Federal, State and Local; to work with manufacturers, retailers and the textile recovery sector such as charities and commercial operators to implement programs that will see a dramatic reduction in textile material to landfill.

“Australia throws out 500,000 tonnes of textiles into landfill every year, which equates to the weight of 9.5 Sydney Harbour Bridges. As you can see, Australia has a really big textile waste problem.”

As part of this Directive, France legislated that for every 1,500 inhabitants, they would place 1 clothing drop-off hub. They saw their clothing hubs increase from 15,000 in 2007 to now 41,000, which is another contributing factor to the increase in recycling rates.

Despite this data, Australian Local Government is taking a backward approach and instead of drawing from a model that has proven successful, they are removing clothing drop-off hubs and their residents’ accessibility to a popular and convenient form of clothing recycling.

“Australia should be increasing their clothing hub numbers, not reducing them, and if we were to follow in France’s footsteps and apply their formula here, we should theoretically have 17,000 clothing drop-off hubs. SCRgroup only has 1,500 clothing drop-off hubs nationally, so there’s a bit of catching up to do,” said Alexis.

SCRgroup is calling on Local Government to seize the opportunity to implement a similar program to the French model and adopt some of their programs to improve textile recycling rates in Australia.

To watch the full interview, please click on the Youtube video above.

If you’re involved with Government departments, would like to host a clothing drop-off hub or would like more information on the above, please contact Alexis Todorovski on alexis@scrg.com.au.