French consumers who bring their shoes or clothes to be mended, to offer them a second life, will receive a small subsidy from the State. The initiative is part of the fight against the waste of textile products, whose industry is one of the most polluting of the environment, including the oceans.
The project was announced last Tuesday by the Secretary of State for Ecology, Bérangère Couillard, during her visit to the La Caserne facilities, which was the largest fire station in Paris –now rehabilitated–, converted into an incubator for textile companies interested in promoting sustainability.
The bonus for the repair of used footwear and clothing will be launched from October. The Government wants to encourage the reuse of these items and thus limit the purchase of new products. The subsidy will come from a fund of 154 million euros created by the State for the period 2023-2028. The bonds will have values ??between 6 and 25 euros, depending on the complexity of the patch. Couillard urged repair shops and shoemakers to register in the Refashion system in order to take advantage of the bonus and manage it.
Public aid will translate, for example, into 7 euros to repair the heel of a shoe or between 10 and 25 euros to cover a cloth. The bonus will be discounted directly from the invoice. According to Couillard, the project is also aimed at the brands themselves. The hope is that his repair service will generate new jobs.
The announced subsidy takes as a model the one that already exists, since last December, to repair household appliances, from washing machines to microwaves. That bonus was enrolled in a law whose philosophy is to combat the planned obsolescence of many household gadgets.
The figures for clothing, shoes and other textile products that come onto the market each year are impressive and generate growing ecological concerns in the long term. In France alone, 3.3 billion textile items were sold last year, 500,000 more than in 2021, according to estimates by Refashion, the body to which the State has entrusted the mission of accompanying the industry towards a much more circular economy.
Couillard recalled that the French throw away 700,000 pieces of clothing and shoes each year, and that, unfortunately, most of this material is not reused and ends up in landfills.
The French government has long been pressuring fashion brands to guarantee the traceability of their merchandise and to financially help those who recycle and reuse.
The anti-waste and circular economy law (Agec) had a fund of 1,000 million euros, for the period 2023-2028, contributed by manufacturers, importers and distributors, under the principle that whoever pollutes pays.
