Six top Italian fashion groups form Re.Crea consortium to manage products’ end-of-life

By

Dominique Muret

Translated by
Nicola Mira

Published
Oct 20, 2022

Six top Italian luxury groups have joined forces to tackle the problem of the end-of-life stage in fashion products. Dolce & Gabbana, Max Mara, Moncler, OTB, Prada and Ermenegildo Zegna have set up the Re.Crea consortium, coordinated by the Italian Fashion Chamber, whose mission is to manage the end-of-life stage of textile and apparel products, and to promote research to develop innovative recycling solutions.
 

“The consortium intends to respond without delay to the EU directive on extended producer responsibility (EPR) with regards to textile waste, and to the [Italian] national legislation implementing this directive, which is currently being defined, coordinated by the ministry for Ecological Transition,” said CNMI.
 
EPR is one of the solutions set out by the European Union to ensure that polluters are held accountable. It means that brands and producers are responsible for the end-of-life stage of their products, and are required to organise their appropriate collection, reuse or treatment. The EU’s goal is for this directive to be fully implemented by 2025. France introduced EPR measures for the textile industry in 2007, and the regulations are set to be eventually made more stringent.

In a document published in March on its website, the European Commission noted that “Europeans discard on average 11 kg of textile materials each year. Globally, the equivalent of a truck full of textiles is landfilled or incinerated every second. Worldwide textile output almost doubled between 2000 and 2015, and consumption of clothes and footwear is expected to increase by 63% by 2030.”
 
The Re.Crea consortium, which will be officially presented on October 28 in Venice on the occasion of the Venice Sustainable Fashion Forum, is expected to welcome other fashion companies as members, so that each can contribute to developing solutions through their own expertise.
 
Re.Crea’s board of directors is chaired by Carlo Capasa, president of CNMI, and includes Lorenzo Bertelli, head of CSR at Prada, Sara Mariani, sustainable development director at OTB, Fabrizio Ruffini of Moncler, Roberto Tognoli of the Max Mara group, Fedele Usai, group communication and marketing officer at Dolce & Gabbana, and Edoardo Zegna, chief marketing and sustainability officer of the Zegna group.