What counts as destruction under the EU ban on unsold clothing
Recycling counts as destruction under the EU ban on unsold clothing. So does energy recovery. The ESPR, Regulation (EU) 2024/1781, carves one thing out of its definition of destruction, and that is discarding for the sole purpose of delivering a product for preparing for reuse.
This piece addresses companies in scope. The Article 25 prohibition has applied to large companies since 19 July 2026, reaches medium-sized companies on 19 July 2030, and does not apply to micro and small enterprises.
For an operations or compliance team, the consequence sits in a contract signed years ago. A textile recycling agreement and an energy-from-waste agreement were, until recently, the responsible-looking end of the disposition chain for stock nobody could sell. Both now sit inside the prohibited conduct for the products listed in Annex VII.
The ESPR definition of destruction, at Article 2(34)
The Regulation states the position most plainly in its recitals. Recital 55:
The concept of destruction as outlined in this Regulation should cover the last three activities on the waste hierarchy, namely recycling, other recovery and disposal. Preparation for reuse, including refurbishment and remanufacturing, should not be considered destruction.
The enacting wording sits at Article 2(34), where destruction “means the intentional damaging or discarding of a product as waste with the exception of discarding for the sole purpose of delivering the discarded product for preparing for reuse, including refurbishment or remanufacturing operations”.
Two points of construction matter to anyone reading this with counsel. Refurbishment and remanufacturing are named as operations within preparing for reuse, so the article holds one exception with two named operations inside it. And “sole purpose” is load-bearing, because a discard with a mixed purpose is not obviously covered by it.
The vocabulary is not ordinary usage either. ESPR takes waste, reuse, recovery, preparing for reuse and recycling from Article 3 of Directive 2008/98/EC, so any argument about a route turns on those definitions.
Why a recycling contract now falls inside the destruction ban
The hierarchy Recital 55 refers to is set at Article 4 of Directive 2008/98/EC, and its lower rungs are recycling, other recovery and disposal. Energy recovery sits within other recovery. Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2026/296, adopted 9 February 2026, sets the priority order that applies where a derogation is relied on and names “other recovery, including energy recovery” within it. Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2026/2, adopted the same day, uses the same construction.
The European Environment Agency reached the same place independently in Briefing 01/2024, treating recycling as destruction “given the need to, for example, shred or dismantle products for this purpose”. That is the EEA’s own working definition, adopted for its measurement work and not issued as a Commission reading of Article 2(34). It is worth having because it names the mechanism. A process that shreds or fibre-opens a garment is not preparing that garment for reuse, which is what the exception requires.
The sharpest confirmation is in the derogations instrument itself. Article 5 of Delegated Regulation (EU) 2026/296 commits the Commission to review that regulation, in particular considering:
whether new scientific data or the evolution of the state of the art of technology justify a derogation for the application of high quality recycling technologies as the option with the least negative environmental impacts.
A derogation is only needed for conduct that is otherwise prohibited. The Commission has written a review clause asking whether high-quality recycling should one day have one, which is confirmation from a binding instrument that it does not have one today.
Three disposal contracts, and which side of the line each falls on
Volume is why these contracts exist at all. The European Environment Agency estimated in Briefing 01/2024 that 4 to 9 per cent of all textile products put on the market in Europe are destroyed before use, amounting to between 264,000 and 594,000 tonnes each year.
Read against the definition, the routes fall out like this.
A textile recycling contract. Inside the definition. Recital 55 places recycling in the concept of destruction and no derogation covers it.
An energy-from-waste contract. Inside the definition, as other recovery.
Downcycling into wipers, insulation or shoddy. No instrument and no published guidance names these routes. The test a brand applies is the Regulation’s own: was the product discarded as waste, and which activity on the waste hierarchy does the receiving process carry out.
The guidance position is worth stating plainly. No Commission guidance document or interpretive notice addresses how the destruction definition treats a particular commercial disposal route, and no national market surveillance authority has published one either. The Regulation, its recitals and the two 9 February 2026 instruments are the authority. Anything past them is a reading, including this one.
The prohibition binds the economic operator. A disposition code inside a 3PL’s system that routes stock to a waste contractor does not move the obligation off the brand, whoever physically carries the stock away.
Evidence that stock went to recovery
The line between what the Regulation requires and what is good practice is worth drawing before anything gets built on top of it.
The ESPR attaches no positive record-keeping duty to routing stock into recovery. A brand that sends unsold apparel for preparation for reuse is not placed under a documentation obligation by that act, and there is no certificate the Regulation asks it to hold.
Documentation obligations attach where a derogation is relied on and stock is destroyed. Article 3 of Delegated Regulation (EU) 2026/296 requires the supporting documentation to be kept for five years after the destruction and put at the disposal of competent authorities in electronic form within 30 days of a request. Its Recital 13 permits documentation to be made collectively where several products are affected by the same circumstances, so even the derogation file is not item-level by default. Article 4 requires a statement on the applicable derogation to be given to the waste treatment operator receiving the goods.
Two lists get conflated here and counsel will notice. Article 25(5) of the Regulation sets seven reasons, at (a) to (g), on which the Commission may create derogations. The ten derogations themselves are at Article 2, points (a) to (j), of Delegated Regulation (EU) 2026/296, which applies from 19 July 2026. The ten derogations are their own subject.
The Article 24 disclosure runs on a separate clock and is aggregate, differentiated per type or category of products. Its final limb asks for the measures taken and planned to prevent destruction. What a first Article 24 disclosure contains is a separate piece.
The following are commercial decisions about how much evidence a brand wants to hold, and the Regulation requires none of them.
- A disposition record per flow, showing what was routed where and reconciling to the aggregate figures the brand publishes.
- Contractual clarity with the 3PL and any waste contractor about which route each disposition code triggers.
- Grading and condition evidence at the point stock is assessed. Ground (b) at Article 25(5) concerns damage caused to products as a result of their handling, or detected after products have been returned, which cannot be repaired in a cost-effective manner. Cost-effective repairability is an assessment, and quality records are what evidence it.
- Confirmation from the recovery route that garments were prepared for reuse and returned to sale. Evidence and the audit trail covers how that reconciles.
That last item is where legacy paperwork gives way. A certificate of destruction from a recycler evidences the route the stock took, and since the concept of destruction covers recycling, that route is inside the prohibition for Annex VII products unless a derogation applies. Paperwork that a whole disposal process was built around, as proof of responsible handling, no longer performs that function.
Where the destruction definition stops
Annex VII lists apparel, clothing accessories and footwear. The prohibition attaches to those products, so this is not a general ban on destroying unsold goods, and Article 25(3) allows the Commission to add products to the list by delegated act.
Which returns fall inside is a separate question, and Article 2(37) gives it a counter-intuitive answer. Which returns the ban covers works it through, and the size thresholds settle which companies the prohibition reaches.
Recovery, and the conduct the ban leaves alone
The exception is narrow and specific: discarding for the sole purpose of delivering the product for preparing for reuse. Delegated Regulation (EU) 2026/296 puts it beyond argument at Recital 3, which states that economic operators might still remanufacture, refurbish or donate unsold consumer products, as well as discard them for the purpose of preparing them for reuse, in accordance with the Article 2(34) definition.
Physically, the garment has to come back to a condition a buyer will accept. The bulk of that work is cleaning and conditioning: stain removal, drying, ironing and final presentation. Repair follows where a piece needs it, and it is a subset of that work. Preparing stock for the resale channel shows the sequence.
Opera Garment Solutions handles that stock. Recovery happens in the market where the garment sold, through a distributed network that draws on garment care knowledge and expertise already present in each market, and Opera is a single point of access to a network of professional garment care experts.
Seeing what a route outside the prohibition looks like on your own stock starts with a test box. A 90-day pilot follows, and then a meeting on which flows are worth putting through it.
Questions compliance teams ask about the destruction definition
Does recycling count as destruction under the EU ban?
Yes. Regulation (EU) 2024/1781 states in its recitals that the concept of destruction covers the last three activities on the waste hierarchy, namely recycling, other recovery and disposal. Sending unsold apparel, clothing accessories or footwear to a recycler is destruction for the purposes of Article 25 unless one of the derogations applies.
Does energy from waste count as destruction?
Yes. Energy recovery sits within “other recovery”. Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2026/296, adopted 9 February 2026, refers to “other recovery, including energy recovery” when it sets the priority order that applies where a derogation is relied on.
What is outside the definition?
Preparation for reuse, including refurbishment and remanufacturing. Regulation (EU) 2024/1781 states that preparation for reuse, including refurbishment and remanufacturing, should not be considered destruction. Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2026/296 confirms that discarding a product for the purpose of preparing it for reuse is consistent with the Article 2(34) definition.
Which products does the ban cover?
The products listed in Annex VII to Regulation (EU) 2024/1781, which are apparel, clothing accessories and footwear. The European Commission confirmed on 17 July 2026 that the prohibition applies to large companies from 19 July 2026 and to medium-sized companies from 2030, and that micro and small companies are outside it. It is not a general prohibition on destroying unsold goods.
Do we need an item-level record to show stock was not destroyed?
No. The ESPR attaches no positive record-keeping duty to routing stock into recovery. Documentation obligations attach where a derogation is relied on: Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2026/296 requires the supporting documentation to be kept for five years and made available to competent authorities in electronic form within 30 days of a request, and permits collective documentation where several products share the same circumstances. The Article 24 disclosure is aggregate.
Does a certificate of destruction from our recycler still evidence compliance?
It evidences the route the stock took. For Annex VII products that route now needs a derogation to be lawful, because the concept of destruction covers recycling. The certificate no longer does the job many disposal processes gave it.
References
- European Union, Regulation (EU) 2024/1781 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 13 June 2024 establishing a framework for the setting of ecodesign requirements for sustainable products, Official Journal, 28 June 2024. Recital 55; Articles 2(34), 2(37), 24, 25; Annex VII.
- European Commission, Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2026/296, adopted 9 February 2026 as C(2026) 659, applies from 19 July 2026. Recitals 3 and 13; Articles 2, 3, 4 and 5.
- European Commission, Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2026/2 of 9 February 2026, applies from 2 March 2027. Recital 3.
- European Commission, “Ban on destruction of unsold clothes and shoes enters into application”, 17 July 2026.
- European Environment Agency, Briefing 01/2024, “The destruction of returned and unsold textiles in Europe’s circular economy”, 4 March 2024.
- European Union, Directive 2008/98/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 19 November 2008 on waste, Articles 3 and 4.
( About the author )
Joanna Lambert
CEO & Co-Founder, Opera Garment Solutions
Joanna Lambert is CEO and co-founder of Opera Garment Solutions, which recovers returned, damaged and unsold clothing for fashion brands across the EU and the UK from hubs in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Spain. She writes on the EU destruction ban and on what returned stock is worth when it goes back to sale.