Feedback delivered on ESPR 2nd milestone

Kinga Zablocka on 3. March 2025

Consumption Research Norway (SIFO) and NICE Fashion have delivered feedback on the Preparatory study on textiles for product policy instruments: Ecodesign, EU Green Public, Procurement EU Ecolabel 2nd milestone. All in all 19 comments were prepared and submitted, after attending a two-day webinar in December 2024, where the 2nd milestone document was introduced.

The submission focuses on issues related to ‘durability’ and ‘repairability’, as these are key concepts from EU’s Joint Research Center, and according to them the main drivers for consumers to keep their apparel for longer. We do not agree with this, and have argued why in the feedback. The idea that Duration of Service can be predicted at the start of a product’s lifetime, is one of the things we argue against, and our recommendation is, as we have repeated often, to immediately start dating products, and use waste audits, or even better, SIFO’s new method to capture relationship between properties and use (more information on the method here clothingresearch.oslomet.no).

There are several other points we make, around issues such as PEFCRs, replacement, environmental impact, aggressive marketing, and volumes; and we hope this will be helpful in the work moving forward. We would wish that JRC took more of a consumer perspective, than an industry perspective in their future work on ESPR for textiles and apparel.

To read our feedback, you can download a pdf of our 19 comments here, each comment starts with where in the 2nd milestone the wording or issue we address is, as this was required in the feedback.

Announcing the publication of Decentering Durability: Decarbonizing and Decolonizing Ideas and Practices of Long-Lasting Clothes

Kinga Zablocka on 29. November 2024

Just published in Fashion Theory, an article exploring durability through a decolonial lens. The research it builds on was conducted as part of the LASTING project, led by our very own Kirsi Laitala and funded by the Research Council of Norway.

The article, written by Kate Fletcher and Anna Fitzpatrick, is open access. Please share widely. Grateful thanks to all those who participated in the research. Link to article here

From the abstract: Durability is widely recognized as a key feature of materially resourceful, lower-carbon clothing lives. Yet most of what is known about long-lasting garments is rooted in Euro-American ways of thinking, and reproduces its structures, priorities, values and resulting actions. This paper brings a decolonial concern to understandings of clothing durability to enlarge the conceptual boundaries around it, including those that break apart dominant ideas and approaches to clothing durability in order to show difference. It presents both the “workings” and the “findings” of a small research project, ‘Decentering Durability’, examining both how research is conducted as well as what is uncovered at the intersection of decolonizing and resource-efficient, decarbonizing agendas for fashion.

Sustainable clothing design: use matters

ingridha on 24. August 2012

Kirsi Laitala and Casper Boks

Abstract

Many life cycle assessment studies document that the use period is the most resource-demanding phase during the clothing life cycle. In this paper, we discuss how design can help to reduce the environmental impacts of clothing. Motives behind clothing disposal, acquisition practices and maintenance habits are analysed based on two surveys, qualitative interviews of households, and examination of disposed clothing. The main reasons for clothing disposal were changes in garments, followed by size and fit issues, taste-related unsuitability, situational reasons, functional shortcomings and fashion or style changes. Several design solutions can enable the users to keep and use the clothes longer, and reduce the need for laundering, thus potentially decreasing the total environmental effects of clothing consumption.

Click here to read the full article (inderscienceonline.com).