Clothing: Manufacturing Industries

(asked on 15th March 2021) - View Source

Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps he is taking to promote environmental sustainability among fast fashion garment producers.


Answered by
Rebecca Pow Portrait
Rebecca Pow
Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
This question was answered on 23rd March 2021

Since 2012, Defra has worked with the clothing industry through the Sustainable Clothing Action Plan (SCAP), co-ordinated by WRAP, to reduce the environmental impact of the sector. During this time SCAP signatories have reduced their water and carbon footprints per tonne of clothing by 19.5% and 15.9% respectively. Building on this, we have worked closely with the industry through WRAP, to develop a new voluntary agreement ‘Textiles 2030’, scheduled for launch in April. This has ambitious targets, aligned with global goals on carbon and water and aims to drive the shift to a more resource efficient textiles sector in the UK.

Textiles is also one of seven key sectors included in our new draft Waste Prevention Programme for England, which was published for consultation on 18 March. This builds on the Resources and Waste Strategy (2018) and sets out government’s approach to improve resource efficiency and reduce waste. It announces that we will develop a proposal for an Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) scheme for textiles, supported by measures to encourage better design and information, and will consult with stakeholders on this by the end of 2022. This could help to boost reuse and recycling of textiles and reduce the environmental footprint of the sector. Our landmark Environment Bill will also give us the powers to take action to ensure better design and provision of consumer information to promote sustainability.

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