1.
Creating a circular approach
to fashion across Europe
Ministry of Infrastructure and Environment
Barbara van Offenbeek-Kuipers
Photo Credit: Charity Fashion Live, Rachel Manns (Photographer)

2.
EU Life project - Creating a circular approach to
fashion across Europe.
European Clothing Action Plan (ECAP)
Creating a circular approach to fashion across Europe

3.
European Clothing Action Plan (ECAP)
Creating a circular approach to fashion across Europe

4.
Creating a circular approach to fashion across Europe
Objective - to adopt a circular approach across Europe to achieve:
(2015 baseline)
ECAP Targets

5.
Creating a circular approach to fashion across Europe
• Reduce clothing footprint and potential cost savings
• Support environmental targets
• Receive advice/ tools
• Become a leader and join a European network
• Work collaboratively
Why get involved - business benefits?

6.
Creating a circular approach to fashion across Europe
• Public procurers are able to take
a key role in the development of sustainable
workwear.
• Setting an example to other buyers and contribute
to reducing the environmental impact of clothes.
The role of public procurement in getting textiles
in Europe more sustainable and circular.

7.
Creating a circular approach to fashion across Europe
Actions ECAP; Public Procurement
• Market report on European workwear-sector and the
organization of public procurement in Europe
• Develop criteria for procurement of workwear
• Organize 5 masterclasses in Europe for suppliers and
procurers of workwear
• Develop and share knowledge to stimulate sustainable
workwear

8.
Creating a circular approach to fashion across Europe
• Context of workwear within European Union
• Identifies challenges and opportunities for public sector
procurement to contribute to a more circular European
economy
• Recommends next steps for public procurers to stimulate
circularity in workwear
Market report on workwear

9.
Creating a circular approach to fashion across Europe
Workwear Procurement
€8.6 billion of contract awards for
textiles
and workwear were made across
the EU28 countries in 2015
Service TED Value (€) percent
Education 12,812,366 0.1%
Social services 15,293,967 0.2%
Energy & Water
Utilities
15,075,647 0.2%
Housing 18,629,094 0.2%
Environment 19,983,478 0.2%
Transport utilities 42,072,974 0.5%
Postal services 45,038,328 0.5%
Public Order and
safety
192,827,612 2.2%
Defence 230,114,384 2.7%
Health 617,064,497 7.2%
Other 1,514,860,723 17.6%
General services 5,901,706,040 68.4%
TOTAL 8,625,479,111

10.
Creating a circular approach to fashion across Europe
• Lack of figures on workwear waste
• Estimated 12-15% waste per annum in European countries
• Three principal routes:
– commercial recycling and re-use collection;
– Take-back and commercial collections and
– Household waste disposal
• Once collected, its bulked with household textiles and clothing
and destined for re-use and recycling abroad
Textile & workwear waste

11.
Creating a circular approach to fashion across Europe
Why are textiles so interesting for Public
Procurement?
• Resource consumption
• Greenhouse gas emissions
• Air and water pollution
• Water consumption & pollution
• Toxicity issues
• Biodiversity loss and land-use

12.
Creating a circular approach to fashion across Europe
Regulatory
• EU: - Health & safety
- Hazardous (e.g. REACH)
- Labour standards
- Procurement practice
• National - Additional regulatory and legislative & policy requirements
Environmental
• EU & national legislation, regulation & policy e.g. WFD, CEP
Economic
• Cost savings
•Voluntary
• Sectoral agreements
EU Regulatory drivers for workwear

13.
Creating a circular approach to fashion across Europe
Current practice (1)
- Governmental Buying Standards (2010) > sustainable procurement is more
at a voluntary best practice level. Proportion of recyceled fibres is the only
explicit resource efficiency criteria
- Majority is re-use or recycled. Branded workwear (like police uniforms)has
lower value due to the security requirement for shredding of branded items
rather than re-use. Permanent branding is one of the barriers to closing the
workwear loop.
- Economic value of used textiles lies almost entirely in the re-usable
component.
- Prices for non-re-usables are low and often can’t pay for transport. > find
their way to down cycling, e.g. industrial rags, low grade blankets

14.
Creating a circular approach to fashion across Europe
Current practice (2)
- Simplify procedures and facilitate negotiations between contracting entity
and bidders
- Encourage innovative solutions and alternate business models based on Life
cycle costing market
- Pursue efficient procurement with low prices while supporting a competitive
market.
- Certification used as minimum procurement requirements
- Help companies to achieve certification
for ecolabel
- Pilots with circular procurement for textiles

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Creating a circular approach to fashion across Europe
Current practice (3) in the Netherlands
- Governmental goals to achieve 100% sustainable procurement
- Use of Category-management for procurement of several productgroups
- Minimum requirements in the procurement and tender-process for product groups for
which sustainability criteria are available
- Policy focused on encouraging market innovation to improve sustainability,
- and targets public bodies to develop their own sustainable procurement policies and
ensure they are linked through procurement implementation
- encourages functional specification
- Textiles Covenant; agreements between government and textile parties to make he
Dutch textile sector more sustainable through coordination and cooperation.
- Pilots to stimulate circularity in workwear

16.
Creating a circular approach to fashion across Europe
•Rijkswaterstaat is the Dutch waterways, public works
and environment authority.
•As part of a commitment by the Dutch Government to
achieve maximum re-use and recycling, Rijkswaterstaat
set up a pilot, within the REBus project to explore the
potential for remanufacturing workwear.
•The main question was; can used clothing be
‘dematerialised’ successfully back into its component
materials – and then be used to create new clothing?
•50 lock stewards were issued with caps, polo-shirts,
raincoats and fleece jackets made of 100% recyclable
polyester materials.
•All of the clothing was successfully recycled, although
the raincoats needed additional material added for
remanufacture into new items.
Pilot 1: Leasing workwear

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Creating a circular approach to fashion across Europe
Pilot 2: Defending Recycling
•The Royal Netherlands Ministry of Defence employs
58,800 people and utilises large volumes of textiles as
uniforms and other products.
•Discarded items had been incinerated, but the ministry
wanted to find a more circular way to deal with disposal
and procurement.
•Following consultation with the market, the Ministry of
Defence wanted to pilot with new textiles and workwear
items containing recycled post-consumer textile fibres.
It also sorts discarded items for re-use.
•Two contracts have been awarded for new items: one
for the supply of 100.000 towels, 10.000 was cloths
(containing 36% recycled post-consumer textiles fibers)
and one for 53.000 overalls (containing 14% recycled
post-consumer textiles fibers); A third contract deals
with the sorting of 750.000 end-of-life items per year.

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Creating a circular approach to fashion across Europe
Circular Procurement Principles

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Creating a circular approach to fashion across Europe
Resource efficient business models
• Take- back /Lease models
• Buy and sell on model
• Servicisation; Product Service System, in-use impacts and end-of life
pathways can have a big influence of the overall environmental impacts.

20.
Creating a circular approach to fashion across Europe
Stakeholders workwear in Europe
• EU
• National
• Demand side
- Procurement
- Use
• Supply side
- Production
- Design
- Distribution
- Servicing (including repair)
• Disposal
- Collection
- Reuse (including repurposing)
- Recycling options

21.
Creating a circular approach to fashion across Europe
Recommendations (1)
Stakeholders
“big fish in a small pond” - Government procurement bodies have
significant demand-pull potential within the workwear garment sector
Collective action - sectoral approaches have successfully demonstrated
the potential for voluntary agreements to close material loops.
Further research would be required to identify and understand better the
more detailed stakeholder relationships and potential of influence across
the different workwear categories.

22.
Creating a circular approach to fashion across Europe
Recommendations (2)
Procurement
• Communicate circular ambitions to the market early to enable
innovation in design, manufacture and supply (e.g. REBMs)
• Adopting national procurement strategies like a Category Plan can
provide the framework, scope and scale for collaboration within the
supply chain.

23.
Creating a circular approach to fashion across Europe
Recommendations (3)
Procurement
Design
material choice
reuse & recyclability
Tendering
developing markets for recycled content
Use
functional lifetime optimisation
ownership (REBMs)
Disposal
collections
Industrial symbiosis

24.
Creating a circular approach to fashion across Europe
Recommendations (4)
• The role of certification and its potential in helping to close textile loops
needs to be better understood.
• Develop a European market led roadmap for circular workwear with actions,
timescales, stakeholders, costs, benefits and incentives.

25.
Creating a circular approach to fashion across Europe
Question to you all:
• Do you have any experiences you’d like to share?
• Would you like to join us and help us develop criteria for circular workwear?

26.
•Go to our website ecap.eu.com and sign up to our project
e-newsletter for updates.
•Download the report:
http://www.rwsleefomgeving.nl/onderwerpen/afval/afval-nieuws/afvalnieuws/co
•http://www.ECAP.eu.com > Public Procurement actions
or:
•Contact: Barbara.van.offenbeek@rws.nl
Creating a circular approach to fashion across Europe

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Creating a circular approach to fashion across Europe