In the last 20 years, global clothing production has more than doubled. The accelerated renewal of wardrobes and the reduction in the lifespan of products, linked to the advent of Fast Fashion , have produced a growing number of unsold items, often destroyed in more than questionable conditions. The AGEC law, which comes into force in January 2022, prohibits this. Analysis.
Clothing waste, scandals and disorderly management
In 2017, H&M reportedly burned a dozen tons of unsold clothing in Denmark. The brand assured at the time that the incineration concerned items that did not comply with the company's safety regulations. In 2018, Burberry's annual report estimated the cost of physically destroyed finished products at €32.6 million, including €21 million in ready-to-wear and accessories , ensuring in the same report that the incineration process was correlated with energy recovery (energy production). The same year, Celio down jackets, shirts and sweaters were found torn in the trash of the Rouen store, in the middle of a cold snap. Faced with protest actions from associations, Celio declared at the time that the products were importable and that they also supported the ADN (Agence du Don en Nature).
So far, each brand manages according to its choices
One explanation for these many unsold items: brands are caught in a vicious circle. They order large quantities of clothing because the larger the volume, the lower the unit costs, particularly in countries where labor is cheap.
It is then up to them to manage unsold items in their own way : sales, clearance sales, outlets, private sales in stores and on dedicated sites such as Veepee or Showroomprivé . Despite this, the Fast Fashion sector generates 25% of unsold items when Luxury generates around 5%. What remains is therefore incinerated or thrown away, after being rendered unusable, in order to avoid a secondary black market.
When it comes to luxury , brands rarely hold sales or clearance sales so as not to damage their image, protect intellectual freedom and avoid counterfeiting. They therefore destroy prototypes and products worth several thousand euros.
A waste upstream and downstream
Disposing of unsold goods is not just about throwing away a finished product, but about wasting materials, supplies, labor, products that can be worn or repaired/upcycled/recycled. Added to this waste is the environmental cost of producing a useless product, transporting it thousands of kilometers, storing it (in heated and lit warehouses) and finally destroying it. Thus, each year, between 10,000 and 20,000 tons of textile products are destroyed in France.
The AGEC Law, towards a circular anti-waste model
The AGEC (Anti-Waste and for the Circular Economy) law, or law n° 2020-105 of February 10, 2020, was introduced by Brune Poirson, Secretary of State to the Minister of Ecological and Inclusive Transition – Nicolas Hulot – in the second government of Édouard Philippe. The Secretary of State’s desire was to profoundly change the behavior of industrialists to enable France to respect the Paris Agreements, that is to say, to include France in a trajectory of global temperature increases “well below 2 degrees” by 2050.
This law aims to accelerate the change in production and consumption models in order to limit waste and preserve natural resources, biodiversity and the climate .
In this context, there is a ban on destroying new, unsold non-food products, from January 1, 2022. For the fashion and luxury industry, this law means that producers, importers, and distributors will now have to “donate, reuse, repurpose or recycle their unsold goods”, but also encourage and help consumers sort, and include recycled or upcycled materials from production. Once again, it is through constraint that the industry is forced to change in depth.
What does the law say?
Promote production including recycled materials
To move towards saving resources from the product design stage, the law strengthens the “bonus-penalty” system. This mechanism, which already exists for products in the TLC sector (Clothing Textiles, Household Linen & Footwear), consists of applying a modulation of the eco-contributions paid by marketers to eco-organizations. It encourages the production of products towards greater durability and/or recyclability, and encourages the incorporation of recycled materials in manufacturing. In concrete terms, manufacturers who design or import their products in an “ecological” manner (by incorporating recycled materials, for example) will benefit from a bonus on the financial contribution they pay to their eco-organization for the management and treatment of the end of life of their products. Conversely, those who do not subscribe to this approach of products with “high environmental value” will have a contribution increased by a penalty. Consumers are informed of this by the presence of a display as soon as they make a purchase.
Ban the destruction of unsold goods
Today, companies destroy 5 times more than they give away. To put an end to this situation, the law prohibits the destruction (landfilling and incineration) of unsold new products and requires systematic recourse to reuse (in particular by donation), reuse and recycling of unsold new products. The objective is also to combat overproduction. Only certain products will be able to benefit from an exception: those for which recycling would lead to a negative environmental impact, a ban (presenting a risk to the environment or to human health) or for which there is no technical solution for reuse, repurposing or recycling.
Collect used textiles
The aim of the law is to promote the development of second lives for products and materials, either by reusing items in good condition or by recycling textile products that cannot be reused. Thus, Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) extends beyond the design and sale of products, and commits it until the end of its products' life. It is therefore up to the consumer to ensure the recovery of its products when they are used and the consumer wishes to part with them. Several distributors already organize a collection of used textiles in their stores; they are identified, with Eco TLC, as holders of voluntary contribution points (PAV), and can be geolocated on www.lafibredutri.fr.
Deploy the Triman icon
Furthermore, to encourage and simplify sorting (to know in which container a product should be placed), the Triman pictogram, which came into force in 2015 but is still little known (a little man with three arrows) must now be accompanied by an explanatory sentence indicating to the consumer, for textile products, the collection point to use: terminals on public roads, boxes in stores, associations, etc.
The favored gift
The AGEC law's timetable is structured – for the management of unsold items – around two dates. The first, January 1 , 2022, concerns all products already covered by an EPR sector, i.e. clothing and shoes . The second is December 31, 2023 at the latest and concerns all other products (for example for luxury fashion houses, leather goods and accessories). The first principle of the law is to ratify the ban on the destruction of unsold items, whether by landfill or incineration. The second principle requires marketers to explore donation, then – only after 3 refusals of donation – reuse or upcycling and finally recycling. The last authorized route is energy recovery. Each of the routes explored allows the finished product or its material to continue its life. Unsold goods – or their materials – become a resource that feeds a loop economy. With this law, the economy of luxury fashion becomes circular.
Solutions for achieving zero waste?
Faced with this rapid change, brands are multiplying initiatives
Reduce supply upstream
To echo the words of Bea Johnson, a leading figure in the zero waste movement : "The best waste is waste that doesn't exist", the McKinsey firm, in its report The State of Fashion 2021, believes that fashion companies in general must now focus on profitability, simplicity and the reduction of collections, more than on discount and volumes. Luxury houses had already started working on reducing the offer with fewer references, they are now wondering about reducing the number of collections.
Among the 500 fashion house executives surveyed by McKinsey for its 2021 Report, 30% announced that they were abandoning the seasonal calendar of shows. In September 2021 in New York, Ralph Lauren, Tommy Hilfiger and Marc Jacobs did so. In Paris, it was Celine and Mugler. Gucci also announced that its collections would now go from 5 to 2 per year. Outside of luxury, some brands have even chosen rarity as their "trademark", like that of skaters Supreme. What is now called the "Drop" model.
In parallel with the reflections on the rhythm of the collections, other avenues are being considered: production on demand, pre-order, and special orders are areas that some brands are developing. But this is especially true for the high end where customers are prepared to wait.
Establish downstream revaluation platforms
It is now necessary to set up circuits and structures capable of absorbing the influx of these unsold items, without them ending up on the markets of certain cities on the African continent, as is often the case, and even more so in 2020, where unsold items were particularly high due to the pandemic and store closures due to lockdowns.
Many luxury brands have turned to associations offering guarantees on the sale of their products, such as the Agence du Don en Nature, and are using ESATs (Établissement et Service d'Aide par le Travail) or associations promoting professional reintegration to anonymize (de-categorize) products. Some have also upcycled their unsold items themselves. An example is Louis Vuitton's "LV trainers upcycling", sneakers disassembled and reassembled according to an eco-responsible philosophy implemented in 2018 by Virgile Abloh; a bag should follow.
There are platforms that allow the recovery of materials, scraps and rolls of unused fabrics post-production from brands (Weturn , UpTrade , Nona Source, etc.), others are being created for post-production revaluation, such as Recycle by Refashion, which facilitates access to materials from recycling and the development of large-scale industrial solutions for the recycling and recovery of textiles and shoes in Europe.
The AGEC Law requires textile and fashion players to review their model in France. Originally decided as a transposition of a 2018 European directive, it actually went further and even prompted the European Union to reformulate its own project. This plan could thus present specific objectives for 2030 in terms of reducing textile waste and establish new community standards. The fact remains that the majority of Fast Fashion textiles are produced and destroyed or reshipped outside Europe...
“Zero waste is not recycling more but recycling less” Béa Johnso n.
