France’s Fight Against Fast Fashion

Sylvie Gallage-Alwis, Partner at Signature Litigation, explains how a bill passing through the French Parliament aims to challenge unsustainable business models in the apparel sector.   

Fast fashion has transformed how we buy our clothes, generating more than US$1.7 billion in global sales revenues last year. More recently, ultra-fast fashion clothing has emerged, providing greater choice at an even lower cost. Despite the obvious benefits to consumers, the French Parliament wants to limit its environmental and sustainability impact through regulation. A bill (no. 2129) passed in March 2024 by the National Assembly, the lower house of the French Parliament, is a first step in that direction.

As a relatively new phenomenon, no legal definition exists. Although the English phrase ‘fast fashion’ is commonplace in France, specific French terms are also used, which translate as: short-lived fashion, express fashion, flash fashion, and disposable fashion. Such label diversity makes itdifficult to define legally.

It could be argued that a company creates fast fashion when production cycles are shortened to ensure a constant renewal of product lines at low prices. Mass production now dominates, representing seven out of every ten items of clothing sold in France. But companies producing ultra-fast fashion go further still: even cheaper than their competitors, they offer up to 10,000 new items in real time online – up to 900 times more products than traditional French brands.

Fast fashion was clearly targeted in a report published in February 2024 by France’s General Inspectorate for the Environment and Sustainable Development (IGEDD). Using the criterion of synthetic fibres in the manufacture of clothing, it accused fast fashion companies of creating pollution through their use of microplastics.

Other attempts to define fast fashion have focused on the number of new product lines, known as ‘references’, an industry-specific practice. Following discussion in the French National Assembly over Bill no. 2129, the definition of fast fashion was extended to include sales made online.

Included in the bill’s definition is a calculation of the number of references “displayed on the electronic interface” by e-market suppliers – to be based on thresholds set by decree by the French Council of State. Notably, the number of unsold items will not be considered in the calculation, provided that these unsold items were not originally owned by the sellers.

The French Parliament has tried to regulate fast fashion before – for example, the 2020 ‘anti-waste’ law, which introduced a

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Ranked: Top 20 Countries by Plastic Waste per Capita

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June 12, 2024 Graphics/Design:

See this visualization first on the Voronoi app.

Ranked: Top 20 Countries by Plastic Waste per Capita

This was originally posted on our Voronoi app. Download the app for free on iOS or Android and discover incredible data-driven charts from a variety of trusted sources.

Single-use plastic waste is perhaps one of the biggest environmental issues of our time. Every year, millions of tons of plastic end up in oceans and landfills, harming wildlife and ecosystems.

To make matters worse, plastics take hundreds of years to decompose, leading to long-term environmental and health hazards as they break down into microplastics that contaminate water and food sources.

In this graphic, we visualized the top 20 countries that generated the most single-use plastic waste per capita in 2019, measured in kilograms per person. Figures come from research published in May 2021, which we sourced from Statista.

Data and Key Takeaways

The data we used to create this graphic is listed in the table below.

RankCountryKg per personPounds per person 1🇸🇬 Singapore76168 2🇦🇺 Australia59130 3🇴🇲 Oman56123 4🇳🇱 Netherlands55121 5🇧🇪 Belgium55121 6🇮🇱 Israel55121 7🇭🇰 Hong Kong55121 8🇨🇭 Switzerland53117 9🇺🇸 U.S.53117 10🇦🇪 UAE52115 11🇨🇱 Chile51112 12🇰🇷 S. Korea4497 13🇬🇧 UK4497 14🇰🇼 Kuwait4088 15🇳🇿 New Zealand3986 16🇮🇪 Ireland3986 17🇫🇮 Finland3884 18🇯🇵 Japan3782 19🇫🇷 France3679 20🇸🇮 Slovenia3577

Countries from all around the world are present in this ranking, highlighting how plastic waste isn’t concentrated in any one region.

It’s also interesting to note how most of the countries in this top 20 ranking are wealthier, more developed nations. These nations have higher levels of consumption, with greater access to packaged goods, take-out services, and disposable products, all of which rely on single-use plastics.

Where’s China and India?

Note that we’ve visualized plastic waste per capita, which is different from the total amount of waste produced by a country. It is for this reason that major polluters, such as China and India, are not present in this ranking.

It’s also worth noting that this

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Take Five: Twin Peaks

A selection of the major stories impacting ESG investors, in five easy pieces. 

Developed countries have belatedly reached a target for climate finance, only to be set a new one for nature.

Ten years after – It might have taken them a little more than a decade, but at last they got there. Developed nations mobilised US$115.9 billion of climate finance for developing countries in 2022, it was revealed this week, exceeding for the first time the US$100 billion annual level set in Copenhagen in 2009. According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), last year saw a record 30% annual rise in climate finance, meaning the target – originally unveiled at COP 15 – was reached two years late. The total includes more than US$20 billion in attributable private finance, as well as bilateral and multilateral public sector funding, plus export credits. Importantly, adaptation finance accounted for US$32.4 billion of the total – three times the 2016 level. Discussions on a New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) on climate finance for the post-2025 period, which made little progress at COP28, should progress next week’s Bonn Climate Conference, where the agenda will also include carbon credits, adaptation finance and the Global Stocktake, ahead of COP29. In anticipation of the NCQG, the OECD released an analysis recommending use of public sector interventions to directly or indirectly finance climate action. But measures to support the goals of the Paris Agreement must now sit alongside those needed to realise the objectives of the Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF). At a Nairobi summit that concluded yesterday, the UN Convention on Biological Diversity called for investments of at least US$200 billion a year from all sources, and for reform of US$500 billion in harmful subsidies to achieve the GBF’s Goal D: invest and collaborate for nature. These and other recommendations will be discussed at COP16 in Colombia in October.

Gap analysis – A lack of progress on gender equality in the workplace has been underlined by the International Labour Organization (ILO) in a report reflecting fewer jobs and lower pay for women, especially in low-income countries. According to an update to the ILO’s annual World Employment and Social Outlook, the ‘jobs gap’ – which measures the number of persons without a job but who want to work – stands at 22.8% for women in low-income countries, versus 15.3% for men. This contrasts with a gap

Take Five: Coal in the Whole

A selection of the major stories impacting ESG investors, in five easy pieces. 

This week’s G7 commitment on coal will have insufficient impact without a global response.

Coal in the whole – The Group of Seven committed to phasing out unabated coal by 2035, but was criticised for allowing continued use of the fuel in power plants that deploy carbon capture technology, as well as for the flexible deadlines it gave to Japan and Germany. The announcement came in response to the COP28 pledge for all parties to transition away from fossil fuel usage. G7 countries said they would submit nationally determined contributions (NDCs) that “demonstrate progression and the highest possible ambition”, including 2030 targets and demonstrating alignment with net zero by 2050 goals. But the Turin communiqué offered precious little detail on the elimination of oil and gas from the energy systems of G7 countries. There has been some action at the individual country level, admittedly, with the US Environmental Protection Agency last week outlining requirements for coal and gas-fuelled plants to capture 90% of emissions, among other measures. While the G7 stressed its adherence to the International Energy Agency’s Net Zero by 2050 scenario, members are not fully aligned with its ban on new oil and gas exploration or development. G7 environment ministers also encouraged other countries to follow their lead on NDCs, and stressed their continued support for Just Energy Transition Partnerships. Given the latter are focused on effecting the clean energy transition of intensive coal users such as South Africa and Indonesia, it is likely that getting these stalled decommissioning initiatives back on track will have more impact on the decarbonisation trajectory than the domestic actions of leading economies. China, it should be noted, added the most coal capacity last year, followed by Indonesia and India.

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