Recycling is not destruction, FESI insists
The Federation of European Sporting Goods Industry (FESI), the organisation that represents the sporting goods sector in Europe, has issued a statement welcoming the adoption by the European Parliament of a report on a European Sustainable Product Regulation (ESPR) proposal.
FESI said it commended the parliament’s efforts in recognising “the trade-offs involved in establishing eco-design requirements”. It described this as a crucial step towards advancing sustainability and environmental responsibility within the industry.
More than 1,800 sports brands, manufacturers, retailers, and national federations are members of FESI and the organisation said they were all working towards “keeping the environmental impacts of sporting goods within planetary boundaries”.
According to FESI, the sporting goods sector envisions a future built on a circular system, one that embraces durable products crafted from safe and sustainably sourced materials. Such a system should be built around a smart mix of circular business models based on reuse, repair, and recycle, it said.
However, the organisation also expressed concerns regarding the parliament’s position on certain provisions around the ban on the destruction of unsold goods. While the destruction of unsold goods suitable for sale should of course be avoided, the current proposed scope remains unclear, it said.
“If we want to scale up the amount of recycled and recyclable materials in the EU, then recycling should not be considered as destruction,” FESI said. “This may lead to misalignment with other EU legislation, such as the waste hierarchy enshrined in the Waste Framework Directive or the objectives of the EU Textile Strategy on textile-to-textile recycling.”
