UNEP urges fashion circularity push as textile waste nears 150 mln tons

27 / 08 / 2026

By Marwa Nassar - -

The fashion industry needs stronger common standards and greater transparency to reduce its environmental footprint as global textile waste is expected to reach almost 150 million tons annually by 2030, United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) Executive Director Inger Andersen said.

Speaking at the Fashion for Land (Fashion4Land) high-level event at the 17th session of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD COP17) in Ulaanbaatar, Andersen said the fashion and textile industry remains a major source of jobs and livelihoods worldwide but faces mounting environmental and social challenges.

The industry employs hundreds of millions of people, most of them women, but clothes are being discarded at an accelerating pace, she said, highlighting land degradation, widespread pesticide use, plastic pollution, deforestation and worker exploitation among the sector’s key challenges.

Circularity needs common standards:

Andersen called for a shift toward circular economy approaches that integrate circularity into product design and prioritize reuse, repair and recycling.

“For this transformation to take hold, we need transparency and we need harmonized standards,” she said.

Common standards can help companies measure, verify and disclose environmental performance and impacts while raising ambition for more sustainable products and production systems and building trust.

However, existing standards remain fragmented and are not sufficiently aligned with the growing number of certification schemes and reporting frameworks, creating confusion and slowing adoption.

Fashion supply chains lack transparency:

Andersen highlighted major gaps in disclosure across the fashion industry, noting that “most of the world’s top fashion brands don’t even disclose how many clothes they make in a year.”

Transparency is even more limited beyond direct suppliers. Fewer than 10% of brands disclose their fiber-processing suppliers, leaving significant gaps in information on biodiversity, land use, chemicals and water.

Greater harmonization of standards could encourage more sustainable design and production while helping businesses reduce compliance burdens, improve comparability and navigate clearer sustainability requirements, she said.

UNEP pushes for policy alignment:

UNEP is working with governments through its Global Textile Policy Dialogues to promote a more coherent approach across the textile value chain.

The dialogues focus on extended producer responsibility, sustainable product design, behavior-change measures, enabling trade systems, and standards and their interoperability.

UNEP is also examining the role of existing standards in reducing pollution from textiles through the Textiles Implementation Program under the Global Framework on Chemicals, with a focus on chemical footprinting and Digital Product Information Systems.

Fashion industry must reform:

Andersen said reforming the fashion industry requires cooperation among consumers, businesses and governments to promote more durable products, reduce the sector’s environmental footprint and keep clothing affordable.

“The fashion industry indeed must reform. It can reform,” she said.