BRUSSELS – A coalition of more than 80 natural fibres organisations has warned that forthcoming European Union ecodesign rules could give synthetic fibres an advantage over renewable materials.
Make the Label Count has written to European Commissioner Jessika Roswall and the Commission’s environment director-general, Eric Mamer, calling for sustainably sourced renewable materials to be recognised in the delegated act being developed for textile and apparel products under the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR).
The coalition said the current policy direction placed too much emphasis on recyclability, recycled content and selected life cycle indicators. It claimed this could favour fossil-based synthetics while failing to capture some of the wider environmental and social characteristics of responsibly produced natural fibres.
The intervention supports a letter sent to the Commission in March by 15 members of the European Parliament’s Sustainable Textiles Working Group. The MEPs called for sustainably sourced renewable materials to be included in the Joint Research Centre’s preparatory work for the textile delegated act.
Make the Label Count said recycled fibres would have an important role in a circular textile economy, but argued that recyclability should not be treated as a substitute for measuring overall sustainability.
It said assessments should also consider the availability of collection systems, contamination, quality loss during recycling, energy consumption and the product’s likely end-of-life route.
The coalition backed a proposed definition covering renewable materials that are replenished at least as quickly as they are depleted and which provide reduced impacts or benefits for climate, nature, people and animals.
However, it cautioned against making certification the main test of whether a natural material qualified. Certification and third-party verification remained important for traceability, it said, but certification did not automatically demonstrate that a material was sustainable. Instead, the group proposed a criteria-based system examining how materials are produced.
This could cover farming practices, land management, biodiversity, greenhouse gas reductions, water stewardship and support for rural livelihoods. Such criteria should recognise better-performing production systems without automatically penalising natural materials that did not meet every requirement, according to the letter.
The coalition also called for equivalent sourcing transparency requirements to be placed on fossil-based synthetic fibres. It said natural fibre producers should not face increasingly detailed requirements covering land use, origin and production while synthetic materials were assessed mainly through recycled-content or recyclability indicators.
Under its proposed approach, regulators would examine the source of feedstocks, production practices and end-of-life impacts across all fibre categories. “Natural materials should not be required to demonstrate increasingly detailed and difficult to collect information,” while synthetics face narrower assessments, the coalition said.
Make the Label Count added that responsibly managed cotton, wool and other land-based fibres could contribute to wider EU goals covering biodiversity, soil, the bioeconomy and rural development.
It cited International Cotton Advisory Committee (ICAC) estimates that around 24 million households worldwide depend on cotton for their livelihoods, arguing that European textile rules would also have economic implications for producing countries outside the bloc.
Lisa Ventura, head of international partnerships at the Brazilian Cotton Growers Association, Abrapa, said sustainability frameworks should use credible and science-based methods that provided a level playing field across materials.
“Brazilian cotton proves that scale and sustainability can go hand in hand,” she said.
The European Commission has identified textiles, with a particular focus on apparel, as a priority product group under its 2025–2030 ESPR working plan. Its Joint Research Centre is carrying out preparatory work that will inform possible requirements covering product performance, information disclosure and the digital product passport.
The eventual rules will apply to textile products placed on the EU market regardless of whether they are manufactured inside or outside the bloc.
