Taxes per garment, repair incentives: How Europe, UK aim to slow down fast fashion

Did you know that making one cotton t-shirt uses around 2,700 litres of water, around the amount that a person drinks in three years? Fast fashion may offer cheap, on-trend clothes, but it also generates an annual 12kg of textile waste per person in Europe, only 1% of which is recycled to make new garments.

The fast fashion industry produces too much, too fast, too cheap, but there are ways to slow it down – in recent years, the EU and European countries have begun to propose, and implement, taxes and legislation that do just this.

No more tax breaks

Up until 2021, millions of packages from platforms such as Shein and Temu – all those valued at under €22 – arrived in Europe without paying VAT. This gave them an unfair advantage over local businesses, but since 2021 all non-EU imports have been subject to VAT.

The European Commission wants to go further, and has proposed a processing fee of €2 for each shipment to the EU. It also wants to eliminate the current €150 import tariff exemption, so that even small orders will pay customs duties.

These measures would prevent non-EU sellers from artificially splitting orders, and would strengthen control over products that are often manufactured under unsustainable conditions or with poor labour practices. The...

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