The EU Textile Strategy: How to Avoid Overproduction and Overconsumption Measures in Environmental Policy

The environmental impact of clothing has become critical in recent decades and the growing volume of products in circulation plays a main role. The European Union’s Strategy for Sustainable and Circular Textiles is a particularly influential policy in this area given the number of regulatory instruments included and their global influence. However, this study highlights the limitations of this Strategy in reversing the trend of growing production and consumption volumes due to its focus on the product level, specifically on product durability. Based on the analysis of public documents and interviews with participants of the policy making process, the study unpacks the factors that enabled such a decision, and how it was integrated in the final document. The analysis shows that by focusing on product durability, an explicit aim to reduce the volume of clothing was avoided, leaving potentially impactful marketing-related measures out of the scope. Two main factors leading to this exclusion are identified: (a) the framing of the Strategy in terms of competitiveness, and (b) a policy-making process prioritizing input from anecdotal rather than scientific knowledge. The study concludes with recommendations to advance knowledge and policy initiatives in marketing-related environmental policy for production and consumption reductions.