with VideoThere must be a new eco-label for clothing that should put an end to the jumble of labels that currently exist. That is what government party D66 advocates in an initiative memorandum.
Walter Peer
Latest update:
07:40
Cheap new clothes score Black Friday sounds nice, but D66 MP Kiki Hagen calls it a ‘jet-black day for our earth’. She wants to tackle the ‘huge mess in the clothing industry’, including by introducing an eco-label.
The impact of the clothing industry is immense as the appetite for fashion continues to grow, says Hagen. “A lot of clothing is produced at a lower quality. The companies that produce take no responsibility at all for the impact on the planet. For example, rivers fill up with paint that is used and eventually a lot of clothing ends up on a waste mountain, which only grows.”
According to Hagen, Black Friday is the ultimate example of consumer culture in the extremely polluting clothing industry. “It is aimed at us as consumers buying even more, and that also leads to higher, polluting production. We have to go against that tide and treat our earth well. Black Friday would be mine actually Green Friday must be.”
Today, Hagen is presenting an initiative memorandum with a number of concrete proposals for tackling the clothing industry properly. A striking point is the introduction of an ‘Eco-score’, or eco-label, on clothing. Hagen: ,,At the moment, all kinds of quality marks are issued: organic cotton, made under good conditions, and so on. Because of all those quality marks you can no longer see the wood for the trees. Such an eco-label creates clarity in one go.” She compares it to the energy label that applies to houses and the recently introduced Nutri-Score for food.
According to D66, many producers are now wrongly pretending to make environmentally friendly clothing. Hagen: “Take a dress made from recycled PET bottles. You think you are buying a good, durable piece of clothing, but that is not the case at all. You can’t do anything with a dress like that anymore, and it still ends up in the dump.” The party wants to set higher fines for deception.
The prices of sustainable clothing are higher, but according to Hagen that should not matter. “The quality of fast fashion is so bad right now, it only lasts a few washes. After that you have to buy new clothes again. You buy new clothes so quickly, while sustainable clothing lasts much longer.”
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