Textile EPR, explained

Extended Producer Responsibility, or EPR, is the biggest shake-up heading for textiles in a generation, and most of the people it’ll affect have never heard the phrase. If you run charity shops, it’s worth getting your head around now, because the version that lands will decide who pays to deal with the clothing nobody wants any more.

So here’s what it means, where things actually stand in early 2026, and what it could mean for charity retail.

What “producer responsibility” really means

The idea’s pretty simple. Whoever puts a product on the market should pay for what happens to it at the end of its life, not the council or the charity left to clear up after it. For textiles, that means clothing brands and retailers paying a fee on every garment they sell, and that money going towards collecting, sorting, reusing and recycling clothing once it’s thrown out.

Those fees are usually “eco-modulated,” which is just a fancy way of saying they’re lower for a well-made, durable garment and higher for a flimsy one built to last a season. The point is to make throwaway fashion carry its real cost, and to reward clothing that’s made to last.

Where things actually stand

This is where it pays to be precise, because the UK and the EU are in very different places.

The EU: already law

Europe has gone first. The revised Waste Framework Directive came into force on 16 October 2025, and it requires every member state to set up an EPR scheme for textiles and footwear, with producers paying a fee per product. The schemes aren’t switched on yet. Countries have 20 months to write it into national law and 30 months to get schemes running, so realistically they’ll be live around 2028. France already runs its own textile EPR scheme, and it’s the template much of Europe is building from.

The UK: on the table, not on the books

The UK hasn’t brought in mandatory textile EPR. The Environment Act 2021 gives the government the power to create one down the line, but they haven’t used it yet. As of early 2026, WRAP, the government-backed body behind the UK Textiles Pact, has put out a UK Textiles EPR Blueprint urging ministers to act, and everyone’s waiting on the government’s Circular Economy Growth Plan for a proper signal. Nothing’s settled. So if you read a confident claim about UK textile EPR, treat it as a proposal, not a rule.

The numbers on the table

To make its case, WRAP has modelled what a UK scheme could do. These are WRAP’s projections for a scheme that doesn’t exist yet, not government figures and not a done deal, but they give you a sense of the scale:

• Left alone, WRAP reckons the cost to councils of dealing with textile waste climbs from around £73 million to £137 million a year, and up to £200 million by 2035.
• A small fee, which WRAP models at 10p a garment, could raise more than £300 million a year.
• Over the next decade, it suggests a scheme could put up to £1.4 billion into UK collection and recycling by 2035.

Whichever way the final design goes, the direction of travel is clear. EPR would pour real money into collecting and reusing textiles.

What it could mean for charity shops

For charity retail it genuinely cuts both ways, and it’ll come down to how the scheme’s designed.

The upside. Charities already do, for free, a lot of what EPR is meant to pay for: collecting, sorting and getting clothing reused, which is the very top of the waste hierarchy. A well-designed scheme could recognise that and steer funding towards reuse, rather than defaulting to recycling or disposal.

The catch. A badly-designed one could pile cost or paperwork onto the very organisations already doing the right thing. That’s exactly why charity retail bodies are pushing to shape the rules now, so reuse is protected and charities aren’t lumped in with waste.

What to do about it today

Nothing to file yet, since there’s no UK scheme to comply with. But two habits will leave you well placed for whatever turns up:

• Keep clean records of where your textiles go. EPR runs on evidence and traceability. The charities that already know, and can show, what happens to their donations will adjust fastest.
• Make sure your collector’s on top of the paperwork. One who already gives you duty-of-care documents and a clear record of every collection will carry you through a reporting regime, instead of leaving you scrambling when one lands.

We keep an eye on all this so you don’t have to, and we’ll keep this page updated as the UK position firms up. If any of it changes how you’re thinking about your collections, we’re glad to talk it through.