EU Ban on Destroying Unsold Textiles Takes Effect

Large companies across the European Union must now find alternatives to destroying unsold clothing, footwear and fashion accessories after new rules under the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation entered into application on 19 July 2026.

The prohibition is one of the first product-specific measures introduced under the regulation, commonly known as the ESPR. It requires affected businesses to prioritize keeping unsold products in use through resale, donation, repair, refurbishment or remanufacturing.

Medium-sized companies will become subject to the same prohibition from 19 July 2030. Small and micro-enterprises are exempt, although companies may not restructure their operations or outsource product destruction to smaller businesses solely to avoid the rules.

The measure addresses a significant but often poorly documented source of textile waste. The European Environment Agency estimates that between 4% and 9% of textile products placed on the European market are destroyed before they are used. This represents between 264,000 and 594,000 tonnes of textiles each year.

Destroying unused goods wastes the raw materials, water, energy and labour required to manufacture them. It also generates avoidable emissions through waste treatment and creates further demand for virgin materials when replacement products are manufactured.

Companies Must Prioritize Reuse

Under the new requirements, large companies holding unsold textiles must first consider options that preserve the products or their materials.

These options can include discounting excess inventory, selling goods through outlet or secondary markets, donating usable items to charities and social enterprises, or repairing and refurbishing products so they can be returned to the market.

Destruction remains possible in defined circumstances. These include cases where products are unsafe, damaged beyond reasonable repair, counterfeit or in breach of intellectual property rights. Goods rejected by donation programmes may also qualify for destruction.

Where destruction is permitted, companies must follow the EU waste hierarchy. This means recycling should generally be prioritized over energy recovery or disposal. Businesses relying on an exemption must retain evidence, such as technical documents, inspection records or test results, demonstrating why the products could not remain in use.

The regulation therefore creates an operational requirement rather than simply a sustainability reporting obligation. Retailers, manufacturers and distributors will need processes for identifying unsold stock, assessing its condition and directing it towards the most appropriate reuse or recovery channel.

Companies may also need to expand relationships with resale platforms, repair providers, recyclers, charities and social enterprises. For businesses with large seasonal inventories, managing these partnerships could become an increasingly important part of supply chain planning.

Reporting and Record-Keeping Requirements

The prohibition is accompanied by disclosure and record-keeping requirements intended to prevent companies from using exemptions as a routine route for disposing of excess stock.

Businesses must publish information about the unsold consumer products they discard, including the quantities involved and the reasons for disposal. Standardized EU reporting formats are intended to make the information more comparable and reduce inconsistencies between companies.

Affected businesses must also retain relevant records for five years so that national authorities can inspect the evidence supporting disposal decisions. Enforcement will be handled by authorities in individual Member States, which may impose penalties for non-compliance.

For companies, the requirements increase the importance of reliable inventory data. Businesses will need to distinguish between products that are sold, returned, donated, repaired, recycled or destroyed and retain evidence showing how each decision was made.

This could require stronger integration between enterprise resource planning systems, warehouse management platforms, returns systems and sustainability reporting tools. Product-level traceability may become particularly important for companies operating across several EU markets or using third-party logistics providers.

Online Returns Add to the Challenge

The growth of online retail has increased the volume and complexity of returned clothing and footwear. Online fashion purchases typically have higher return rates than products bought in stores, partly because customers cannot try items on before purchasing them.

Returned goods may lose value quickly, particularly where they are seasonal, require inspection or repackaging, or remain within reverse logistics networks for extended periods. The cost of processing a return can sometimes make disposal appear cheaper than preparing the product for resale.

The new prohibition changes that calculation for large companies. Retailers will need to consider waste-prevention obligations when designing returns policies, forecasting demand and deciding how products move through fulfilment centres.

Potential responses include improving sizing information, using product data to reduce avoidable returns, accelerating inspections, introducing resale channels and designing packaging that can survive multiple deliveries.

However, the prohibition does not directly limit how much clothing companies produce. Its effectiveness will therefore depend partly on whether businesses also improve demand forecasting and reduce overproduction rather than simply expanding downstream systems for handling unsold stock. The original Sustainability Magazine report notes that unsold inventory remains closely connected to online returns, seasonal sales and the economics of reverse logistics.

Part of a Wider EU Textile Policy

The destruction ban forms part of the EU Strategy for Sustainable and Circular Textiles, which aims to make textile products placed on the European market more durable, repairable and recyclable.

Other measures under the strategy include ecodesign requirements, restrictions on textile waste exports, stronger consumer information, support for repair and reuse business models and the introduction of Digital Product Passports.

The European Commission launched the EU Digital Product Passport Registry and a testing environment on 20 July 2026. Digital Product Passports are intended to provide structured product information that can support supply chain transparency, regulatory compliance, repair, reuse and recycling.

The registry will record unique product identifiers and associated metadata, while the underlying product information will be stored through decentralized systems. Businesses will be able to register passports through an online interface or an application programming interface that can be integrated with existing systems.

Textiles are among the product groups expected to be covered as ecodesign requirements are developed. For clothing and footwear companies, the combined direction of EU policy is therefore moving towards more detailed information about product composition, durability, repairability and end-of-life management.

Producer Responsibility Will Extend Beyond Unsold Stock

The EU has also revised its Waste Framework Directive to introduce mandatory extended producer responsibility schemes for textiles and footwear.

Under these schemes, producers placing covered products on the EU market will finance the collection, sorting, reuse and recycling of those products when they become waste. Fees are expected to be adjusted according to sustainability criteria such as durability and recyclability, creating a financial incentive to improve product design.

Member States have until June 2027 to transpose the revised directive into national law and until April 2028 to establish textile and footwear EPR schemes, based on the directive’s entry into force on 16 October 2025. Micro-enterprises will receive additional time to comply with certain EPR requirements.

Together, the destruction ban, EPR requirements and future ecodesign rules will affect companies at several stages of the textile lifecycle. Businesses will face requirements concerning how products are designed, what information accompanies them, how unsold inventory is handled and who pays for waste management.

The immediate priority for large companies is to ensure that unsold stock is no longer destroyed as a standard inventory-management practice. Longer term, the regulations are likely to place greater commercial value on durable products, accurate product data, repair services, secondary markets and fibre-to-fibre recycling capacity.

Source: sustainabilitymag.com