The Sector Collaboration paves the way for producer responsibility
The Sector Collaboration for Textiles is a project launched in 2022 by the then Minister for the Environment and is run by Lifestyle & Design Cluster.
60 companies participate in the collaboration, representing a significant share of the textiles on the Danish market expected to fall under producer responsibility.
The collaboration is tasked with addressing three elements of the EU Textile Strategy:
The collaboration has set targets for 2030, which the participants are working together to meet. The overarching goals cover:
Participating companies are required to report data annually on progress towards the targets. Lifestyle & Design Cluster recently held its Summit on June 4th, where the 2025 results were presented.
The Sector Collaboration's focus on recycled fibres in the production of new textiles is particularly relevant to the extended producer responsibility (EPR).
It offers companies valuable practical experience of how the value chain can be restructured to incorporate more recycled fibres into new products.
Fibre-to-fibre recycling is a particular focus within EPR. The Sector Collaboration's results show that cotton is the primary contributor to fibre-to-fibre recycling among participating companies, though wool recycling also takes place to some extent.
The data collected on recycled fibre content is expected to be the same data required for environmental fee differentiation of textiles under EPR.
At Tekstilretur, we expect recycled fibre content to become one of the parameters subject to environmental differentiation.
There is another dimension to the lessons around recycled fibres.
Producers will be tasked with scaling up fibre-to-fibre recycling facilities in Europe as part of producer responsibility.
This can be addressed through various incentive structures, procurement, and ultimately investment, but even with scaled-up capacity, the challenge remains that there is currently no viable market for the end product, i.e. the recycled fibres.
If no market exists to purchase the fibres, producers will face an additional cost: disposing of the output from textile waste incineration rather than selling it as a product. This will have a direct impact on the fees paid to producer responsibility organisations.
If, on the other hand, demand for recycled fibres can be created at scale - drawing on knowledge from the Sector Collaboration, for instance - this will have a positive economic effect on the producer responsibility costs borne by producers.
It is not only the results from the Sector Collaboration that are relevant to producer responsibility - the processes are equally instructive.
Participating companies have had to transform the way they engage with their entire supply chain in order to gather the data required for reporting under the collaboration.
These are valuable lessons that other Danish producers can benefit from as they prepare for the first rounds of data reporting on textiles under producer responsibility.
At Tekstilretur, we will draw on the Sector Collaboration's experience and build on the groundwork already laid.
We are particularly mindful that EPR will affect many SMEs with limited administrative capacity. It is therefore a key task for us as a producer responsibility organisation to translate these learnings for our members, so that smaller companies in particular can benefit.
The Sector Collaboration's action plan and latest status report are available on Lifestyle & Design Cluster's website: The Sector Collaboration for a circular economy in the fashion and textile industry: Sustainable solutions for the future.