Circular Soundbites
Circular Soundbites is the place to hear from the people shaping what’s coming next within the many industries and sectors Reconomy reaches. We’ll be talking to key industry experts and insiders, offering up real, practical insight on everything connected to the circular economy.
In addition to standalone episodes, Circular Soundbites will also offer dedicated, multi-part series that explore the systems, decisions and day-to-day realities driving real circular progress.
Circular Soundbites
Thread Talks: Driving circularity through collaboration
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Collaboration is one of the biggest challenges, and opportunities, in the transition to a circular textile economy.
In this episode of Circular Soundbites: Thread Talks, Anaïs De Bergeyck, Policy Officer for Sustainable Businesses at Euratex, shares a Europe-wide perspective on how organisations can move beyond ambition and start delivering circular outcomes at scale.
Across the textile value chain, progress is often slowed by fragmented systems, competitive silos, and a lack of shared infrastructure. Many of the barriers to circularity are not technical, they’re organisational.
In this conversation, we explore:
- Why collaboration is critical to scaling circular solutions
- How pre-competitive spaces enable data sharing and alignment
- The role of regulation, including EU textile EPR and Digital Product Passports
- What businesses need to do to move from insight to implementation
As regulatory pressure increases and expectations grow, organisations will need to work together in new ways to enable reuse, repair, and recycling at scale.
Welcome to Circular Sound Bites, the podcast where we break down the ideas, systems, and decisions driving real progress in the circular economy.
SPEAKER_00Circular Soundbites, a Reconomy Podcast.
SPEAKER_01I'm your host, Amy Campanella, Development Director for Textiles EPR at Reconomy. And I'm here in London today filming our podcast series, Thread Talks, to discuss the importance of collaboration with our special guest, Ananise, policy officer at EuroTex, the voice of the textile and apparel industry in Europe. Welcome, Ananise. Thank you for being here today. Thank you, Amy. Thank you for having me. Thank you so much for joining our podcast today. Before we get started, it would be great if you could introduce yourself and your current role with EuroTex.
SPEAKER_02So I work as a policy officer at Euratex, which is the European Apparel and Textile Confederation. So we represent around 200,000 companies in Europe, textile and apparel. We're under mostly SMEs, 95%. And I work on different legislations. We're under the Omnibus Simplification One, which concerns the CSRD, so Corporate Sustainable Reporting Directive, and the CS Triple D on Due Diligence. I also work on the upcoming Circular Economy Acts, on the Environmental Omnibus, and on the Waste Remeric Directive implementation. And then next to that, I also hope I will speak about later on the Secretariat of the Textile Pierre Forum.
SPEAKER_01And tell us a bit about your journey into your role at Eurotex as a policy advisor.
SPEAKER_02So I started my journey in sustainability back during my studies. During my master, I actually had a little uh company that I built where I was selling uh sustainably sourced garments that I was actually sewing in uh in a jail in Belgium. So it was it was sued by inmates, so it had uh the social uh impact, but it was also sustainable. And um then came the moment like, what am I gonna do? And then I moved to HM because I thought if you work in a big company, you can maybe have one day a big impact. So I started there um as a graduate program. So I did five rotations in a year where I got the full spectrum of how a retail company works, working in logistics, controlling marketing, um, consumer insights in Stockholm and in Poland for them. And then I moved in Paris as a merchandiser. So it was really more data-driven. Uh, how can you improve selling? How can you manage all the stocks for Belgium, France, and Luxembourg? And then um I ended up uh doing some volunteering actually in the beginning for the sustainability um departments. So I entered HM always willing to work in sustainability at one point, but for that you kind of had to stay in Sweden. So my choice of moving to Paris was not really aligned to this. But then um, France is kind of a front runner in some uh sustainability legislations, uh, especially um on EPR, which is extended producer responsibility. So as a merchandising merchandiser where you know data and how to work with numbers, um, I was actually doing uh EPR reporting for them, so reporting all the data we're selling. And I also worked on the first eco-modulation uh project. I thought what could be a good step if you want to work um in sustainability and also have uh uh an impact, but also understand the an even broader picture of it. So that's when I decided to move into policy and my journey's.
SPEAKER_01I love this journey from a startup with a social enterprise working with inmates, making sustainable clothing, to working within a policy environment at EU level. Going back to the clothing, the sustainable clothing with inmates, could you tell us a bit more about how that got started and how the initiative started and what type of clothing you were making and where the clothes were going?
SPEAKER_02So initially uh it wasn't garments, it was me. Uh, I really like to sew, and I was walking in the market in the Sal of Friends where I'm going every year with my family, and I sewed those uh reusable uh D-makeup um swaps. So I started sewing them for me, my friends, um, and then a lot of people got interested into actually having uh those reusable swaps. It was the very beginning of sustainability school, so you had all those reusable strows, and it was it was kind of uh, I don't know if you say a vibe, but kind of. So I was I started sew them for my friends, and then people were like make a business out of it. So I was sold in seven, eight uh stores in Belgium, but also an e-com uh platform. So it was quite big, uh, and at some point I couldn't handle production on my own. I heard about um some atelier, you would say in French, where you have actually inmates working, earning a wage which is lower, but it teaches them a job. Um, it gives them some money also for when they they get out of jail to start something new, and and maybe they want to continue as well working in that direction. It was actually very nice because then I I got to know some inmates as well. And then from there I wanted to take more of the fashion side out of it. So I was doing bucket hats and bags as well. Um, I was yeah, buying uh this EcoTex uh textiles in Belgium and then working together with the inmates.
SPEAKER_01You've got a really good understanding of the whole supply chain then when it comes to textiles from design to manufacturing to selling on the short floor, short floor with merchandising, analyzing the data, and then how that then feeds into policy. Today's episode is all around collaboration. What are some good examples of collaboration that you that you've been involved in that you've experienced?
SPEAKER_02I also hold the secretariat of the textile PRO Forum. And so the textile PRO Forum is so PRO stands for producer responsible organization uh within the waste for directive and the EPR, so extended producer responsibility. You have a brand, let's take uh HM, uh, putting uh garments on the market, and it's for the brand to become responsible for what they place on the market and for how you can make it circular for the end of life of the waste they're placing on the market. So you have then the PRO, so the producer responsible organization who's gonna work between the circular solutions and the circular system and the brand itself. So the brands will pay an EPR fee for the amount of product they're placing on the markets, who's gonna be collected by the producer-responsible organization who's gonna reinvest that money into circularity. So reuse, recycling, sorting, um uh repairing, so different options, but also research and development. And in 2023, uh Eurotext, together with Refashion, which is the French uh producer-responsible organization, they launched this textile PRO forum, which is then an initiative bringing together today around 30-31 uh PROs or candidate textile PROs uh across Europe and the UK to aim for harmonization because in the WISF directive, you hear directive, so it's not a regulation, which means there is fragmentation, which means the harmonization can be uh also worked or done via the actors. And so we bring together all those producers, uh producer-responsible organizations, and we collaborate, we share knowledge, we anticipate, we also um explain uh what is the current state of play in every different market, and then quite often we have also external guests coming and then speaking about their point of view. So we've had uh representants of uh governments, for example, when we had our last plenary session in Czech Republic. So we had a lot of different actors, we might have brands involved or other um people jumping in at some point.
SPEAKER_01We are part of the forum as we have redress, our textile EPR PRO, based in Italy, Poland, Austria. Being part of the forum has been so cool, and it's been a great opportunity to collaborate with other producer responsibility organizations in other member states, as well as other producer responsibility organizations in the same member states where we're operating. And that's something unique to have that collaboration amongst competitions, the collaboration that we're currently working towards within the forum across the pros. How can we help to make that happen across brands and retailers and the textile recycling infrastructure?
SPEAKER_02If you define um the governance of the EPR system, um, and everyone has clear roles, so the recycling industry is there, of course, to recycle. The producer-responsible organizations are there to understand um uh what is there and what is not there yet, and which gaps need to be filled. And when you have collaboration with brands as well. So I guess if every single role is defined, and for the brand to understand that EPR ultimately will help them maybe design better garments that will um that will last longer or be recycling, um be recycled, uh then you can go um and have real collaboration because then you know you're all working towards the same purpose, which is circularity. I'm working in um one initiative that is called a one-stop shop. So it's emerged from Amazon a few years ago. They launched this uh seed project, it was called back in the days. Now it's one-stop shop, because they wanted to harmonize and to reduce the admin burden for companies and producers to have like one registration, one platform, one way to translate all the information, um, all the data into um the EPR fees to understand exactly how it works. Um now there is discussion at EU level to have a one-stop shop, uh single registration as well at EU level. And it's amazing because you see recyclers, you see brands, you see organizations, um, engineers as well, and they're all there together trying to build this platform together and to understand even how the payment would operate later on if it would be included in that platform to be decided as well.
SPEAKER_01And the one-stop shop, is that focusing on EPR legislation for textiles or is the remit broader? All schemes. All EPR schemes, so packaging, electronics, batteries, yes, and any other environmental legislation or just EPR focus?
SPEAKER_02It could be integrated with the digital product passport, so the DPP later on. Uh, that would be the main purpose. Because if you even link the DPP with the OSS, um, then you have the traceability, and you can also maybe work on echo modulations via this if you have some harmonic, harmonized echo modulation criteria one day. So it's kind of all interlinked. So you need digitalization, of course, um, you need innovation, you need traceability, and you need all of these regulations to be um yeah, interoperable or to have some interoperability. This word is hard, um, between all the legislation to work together. So it's supposed to work across all schemes to ease the admin burden for registration, for reporting, payment is to be decided. Um, it's under discussion, but it's not there to replace a PRO because a PRO in the end is also a service provider.
SPEAKER_01And an important part of legislation when it comes to textiles, ESPR is reducing that administrative burden. And that, but before I go on to that, we've got another acronym, OSS. Yeah. We've got another acronym to add to the the, I don't know, alphabet soup of acronyms that we have within environmental legislation. Yeah. Which is your favorite? What is your favorite acronym?
SPEAKER_02Uh CEA, Circular Economy Act.
SPEAKER_01Great one.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Yeah. Would you tell us a little bit about that? Circular Economy Act. So it kind of goes, or we thought it could have gone hand in hand with the environmental omnibus, but basically, since a year you had um a lot of focus towards simplification and harmonization. So the environmental omnibus is there to simplify. The Circular Economy Act, we hope, is there to harmonize and also to make it easier for SMEs to cope as well with legislation. So via the Circular Economy Act, we might hope there is some harmonization on registration already. Uh, also on the SCIP database, on the eco-modulation, to have already some guidelines or some uh eco-modulation criteria that are set so that countries can already start working on echo modulation, um, waiting for the ESPR Textile Delegated Act to uh to be implemented. Um so yeah, it's it's really there to also enable uh a single market in Europe. Because, of course, I think, I mean, I do believe that if we want circularity in Europe, we need to have a single market that is um yeah, collaborative but working all together. It's really how can you harmonize as much as possible to make Europe strong?
SPEAKER_01You mentioned how Refashion and Eurotext collaborated to found the textile EPR PRO forum. Could you tell us a bit about the system in France, the textile EPR system that's there, and the eco-modulation system that's there, and actually maybe even go a bit further and set the scene on where we're at across Europe with textile EPR?
SPEAKER_02Today you have a textile EPR that is already implemented in four countries. So, France, as I mentioned, has been front-runners. I think it's been there for 10, 15 years already. Then you have the Netherlands. Uh uh, if I remember well, it's been there for two or three years. You have Latvia, um, who's also joined two years ago, if I'm not mistaken. And then last but not least, Hungary. Um, so you have three PROs in Latvia, uh, and the reporting is based on weight because you calculate the EPR fees based on the on the weight of a piece placed on the market. So let's say um a t-shirt would be maybe three cents, although a sweater might be four cents and a denim a different price. The reporting in the Netherlands is also based on weight. Um in Hungary, I do believe it's only based on the total amount placed on the market. It's more seen as a tax uh in Hungary. And finally, in France, it's uh based on the piece of clothing uh itself. So it's I think you have around 104 categories of garments in France. So you categorize all the volumes you place on the market, and you anticipate these EPR fees a year in advance based on the sellings you had. And then you have um eco-modulations, and eco-modulations, the only country which had it in place is France. And ECO modulation is there to incentivize brands to produce better or more durable garments, and then they will have um bonus fees, so they will get back some money, but you also have some malus in place. So in the bonus points, you have one on durability. If your garment passes this durability criterion, then uh you get some money back. You have it also on the labels, such as gods, for example. So if you if you have some certificates for your garments, you have it for um recycled uh targets within uh hundred uh thousand kilometers of the selling point. And uh finally you have some um malus point as well. This arrived last year, and this is if you have some metallic fibers in your garments, such as um glitters, for example. But what is quite interesting though with the accommodation, and I think it's quite important to say it, because as I mentioned before, I worked on the accommodation project in HM. And I do believe in EPR. I do believe EPR can really help scaling circularity throughout Europe if it's made in a good way and in a collaborative way. But what is great is to see that if you have actually harmonized accommodation throughout Europe, then you can really incentivize the brands to design better because you have some financial um perspective on it or financial um advantages. It's really how how can you just bridge together the economic part with the sustainability, and you do realize that it works hand in hand. And I do believe when you work for a fashion company, if you have the economic incentive behind it, that's where you can have like a real impact, and that's how you can really make things change at production level and throughout the whole supply chain. So if those eco-modulations at some point become harmonized throughout Europe, it can have a huge impact.
SPEAKER_01Tell us more about the project with HM that you did around eco-modulation and how it linked into the French system or how it differed.
SPEAKER_02So I came so from the merchandising perspective where you have a lot of stakeholders. So you understand the products, um, you work with a lot of different systems. So there was a lot of communication with Sweden to work with the designers uh to also understand how we can produce in a more durable way. Then there was a lot of collaboration within the sustainability team to build that strategy around ecomodulation. And then there was a lot of um collaboration still within um the value chain with uh producing countries. So where you needed to get the data and also understand exactly uh what was the exact composition of your garment of your packaging as well, because of course I was also doing EPI reporting for uh batteries, packaging um furniture. But so you work a lot um with various stakeholders within the company to really understand um the garment itself, this its design process, but also the amounts that are placed on the market, everything you have a lot of contacts with the warehouses. And then next to that, you're also working with um external laboratories. You work with them and you you you collaborate um into understanding which garments pass, feel, how do you adapt your strategy of testing during the year as well? Ecommodulation was kind of new in France, so I guess it was a learning process for the labs, for the PRO, for the brands. But um ultimately I would say um it was it was a success.
SPEAKER_01What are some of the challenges in getting various stakeholders together to collaborate?
SPEAKER_02In HM, actually, there wasn't really a challenge on this. Uh I think HM is a it's a massive company, but um it's all about collaboration.
SPEAKER_01You mentioned that HM, they were able to collaborate well from across the value chain with lots of actors. What was their pattern for success?
SPEAKER_02It's establishing who has its own position in the company and also how can everyone support each other. Because of course, when you have a new project, I would say in the challenge here, it's about understanding who are the right person to reach out to to get the information because it might seem so hard or complex to get information and data because it's so big. But when you get the right person and you understand how the ecosystem works, then it's how you can start collaboration and reaching out to people. I guess you just need to believe in the fact that you will always find the answer somewhere or the right person to reach out to.
SPEAKER_01Thank you for giving an overview on the current legislative landscape in France, Netherlands, Hungary, and Latvia. There's lots of variations there. And the EU Waste Framework Directive is aiming to harmonize that. But there's national differences that are likely to remain. What is the best way for PROs that are established, that are being established within each country and across member states to collaborate to ensure that when they establish eco-modulation systems, that they're not doing something wildly different to what France is doing?
SPEAKER_02So I guess on this, the textile PRO forum could be a great initiative. So we are working on five different work streams at the moment. So you have the harmonization of framework, eco-modulation, uh, mapping of uh recycling infrastructures that you're leading. You have also how can you scale or create a PRO too? And what is great is that here you have so experiences from already established uh PROs, so France, Netherlands, and others, but you also have experiences from PROs that are currently discussing the draft with the municipalities as well. So they are also advancing proposals saying what challenges they're encountering, what victories they do have. And this can also help the other PROs and the other countries understand how to collaborate, but also how to communicate with the municipalities into establishing the EPR system in their own country. We've encountered, for example, a challenge during our last plenary session in Czech Republic, where we understood that you had in some countries the emergence of statefront PROs, for example, you would have just the government and the brands, and the EPR fees would be more seen as a tax uh instead of an EPR fee. So you would lack the transparency to the investment of these EPR fees. Where does it go? How is it invested in circularity? Which might give also a lack of trust from the brands into the circular solutions and also into the investments, and if it's really being used into improving circular solutions. We launched this challenge statement that we extended to all the PROs because this is how you can also support the industry. It was great to see this, yeah, in the end and this collaboration and everyone working together towards one topic. And then on the work streams, um the purpose is most probably to publish some guidelines also on the work being done. So, for example, on the scope, um, something is still kind of a gray zone in the risk framework directive. What is really in scope or not? Um, so the the PROs have been working together on CN codes, so the custom codes of uh garments and others, and seeing what ideally should be included or not. And then the purpose at some point to to have guidelines to publish it so that everyone can use it and see how they're trying to harmonize it. It's not like there is one solution that fits all, but at least it's a work being done from an operational perspective. There is going to be a lot of work done on eco-modulation, I mean upcoming work, because so far the exchange of knowledge has been given from different schemes, but also from the French system. But the purpose now is to try to maybe influence also the harmonization of uh eco-modulation uh on an EU level. And then last but not least, uh something that might get published soon as well is this EPR mapping. What is in scope? Do they have recycling targets? Do they have sorting targets? Um do they have like a quarterly reporting? So you see really like how everyone is advancing in their own country at their own pace. Um, is the draft already published? Is it implemented? Yes, no, and then you have also quarterly updates. So I think it's a great platform because you see that there is a lot of collaboration. Um there is competition, of course, among those PROs because in some countries you have only one PRO that is established, but in some other countries, you have, for example, in Italy, you have eight different PROs so far, some focusing more on uh sports, some others on shoes. Um, some are just doing everything. But it's really about how can we work together? Because in the end, um a PRO, yes, is there to serve the purpose of circularity. And if you have, for example, France who is a bit more advanced, who's already investing in also research and innovation, I guess it's useful for everyone to know okay, they're investing in research and innovation. Um, how do they do it? How far are they at? Let's not duplicate efforts, or let's align, or how can we scale it together?
SPEAKER_01Five different work streams that are being worked on through the forum are really great examples of knowledge sharing through collaboration, as well as developing guidelines and resources, not just for the producer responsibility organizations and for the textile and footwear associations, but for other actors throughout the value chain, brands, retailers, collectors, sorters. Thinking about the importance of that in-country collaboration and using Italy as a really good example where there's there's about eight different PROs for textiles, and it's a very competitive environment, but it's a great example of the importance of working together. How do you think that collaboration also translates into the collection and sorting and recycling infrastructure and thinking about how we manage the flow of post-consumer textiles across borders?
SPEAKER_02So I think it's all about facilitating the single market. So the Circular Economy Act is there to enable the single market, the single markets, for example, at the Workstream Free that you're leading into uh the mapping of recycling, if at some point, because I know many other initiatives such as ReHelps, um uh even refashion, is also mapping uh recycling uh infrastructures to some extent. It's if at some point you understand what is where and how can you circulate it and really use the resources throughout Europe for the purpose of uh circularity?
SPEAKER_01An important potential first step to collaboration is avoiding duplication and understanding what work is already being done out there on, for example, developing recycling infrastructure and collaborating with the organizations that are maybe already putting a bit of the work in, putting the effort in. What are some other practical steps that you would give to brands and retailers to guide them towards collaborating when it comes to policy development, specifically around textile EPR and ESPR?
SPEAKER_02ESPR is eco-design for sustainable product regulation. The purpose of it is ultimately to link it to eco-modulation to understand how to design better, because what is being designed better can be recycled better or reused better or repaired better. If you link all the regulations together, so ESPR, how can you design better to the echo modulations, which gives a financial um incentive to the brands? So it costs them less to be more durable. Then you can incentivize the brands, but also if you create a good market for secondary raw materials, you can scale recycling because the recycling industry today is not, um, at least in Europe, is not doing so well, or at least there is a lot also being done uh outside of Europe. Our purpose is to make Europe great. So, how can you make it possible to have a lot of recycling done in Europe? You need to increase the demand, but to increase the demand, you need to lower the cost, and it's all a matter of scaling it together. So if you produce better, you recycle um better, it's less costly for you as well, then you can increase the demand, and then you can just reuse the recycling that is being done in Europe. So it's all interoperability, no duplication, no overlapping of regulations, but just working towards one goal and aligning all those initiatives together. So I guess for a brand today, if you see all these regulations, you might think, whoa, this is so much, it's so burdensome, I don't even know where to start. But if you think of it as an early investment into circularity and into recycling and into how can you make your garments um more durable, but not especially more costly or not especially more expensive for you to produce, then it's it's I think it's the greatest incentive for a brand. So it's really understanding where to start. And I would say today, if if I were a brand, it's how can you anticipate as much as possible? Um, how can you try to already produce better today, understand what innovation is there, but also invest in innovation. Because if you invest in innovation in recycling now, you can again scale recycling capacity in Europe, and then you can boost and incentivize even more companies to invest with you. And I believe this is like the real collaboration ultimately.
SPEAKER_01What's some really cool innovative stuff that you've seen recently, like on the note of innovation and brands investing in innovation? What's something interesting that you've seen?
SPEAKER_02Well, um, something that is quite cool is that you see today um the takeback systems as of Jan, January 2025, uh, you have the um the mandatory collection of garments. But though you have already a lot of brands that were doing it before, and um and now even more brands doing it, all these take back systems in store where you get incentivized for customers because of course it's it's also about educating the customer. So brands can work um towards circularity, recycling, governments, municipalities, PROs, everyone can work together. Um, but you need to educate the consumer into buying more uh responsible, more durable garments. I do believe when you have this incentivized in stores where you get some discounts or some green points, for example, uh when you uh give back your garments, this can really help scale also sorting uh that was in place back in the days. Um no collect collection, sorry. Um, I think this is something that I saw that was really cool, but then more like into a system that I do believe has been great. Um it's actually the uh a friend of the sister of a Beth of a really good friend of mine. She was on maternity leave and she launched um secondhand uh um retail company for babies. So I know there's a lot of charity and a lot of second-hand stores in England, but um in Belgium it's the first store that opened for babies only, and it's actually scaled quite quickly, and it's so smart because she just thought, like, okay, the garments for babies are so expensive, and what do we do with those garments? And and quite often those garments are just you can reuse it, you you can reuse them because the babies grow so fast that they don't they do not even have the time to to to damage their garments. So she created that brand called Demon. Um, and it's it's booming.
SPEAKER_01I love that. Super innovative, and that really is fast fashion. Babies grow fast, so their fashions change very quickly. If people want to learn more about the fantastic work that you're doing at Eurotex and with the textile EPR PRO forum, what's the best way for people to get a hold of you and the Eurotex team?
SPEAKER_02Uh well, either they can reach out to me or some of my colleagues, or they can go directly through EuroTech's websites. They will find everything about it on the latest news and also all the different legislations.
SPEAKER_01Wonderful. Anaise, thank you. It's been a pleasure.
SPEAKER_02It's been a pleasure for me.
SPEAKER_01This has been a Circular Soundbites podcast from Reconomy. Thank you to my special guest Anaise and to you for listening. If you enjoyed today's episode and you'd like to listen to more circular sound bites, you can find us streaming on all major platforms as well as on our YouTube channel. And if you want to learn more about Reconomy, check us out on LinkedIn or at Reconomy.com.