Europe expands waste management requirements for the food and textile sectors

On September 26, the Official Journal of the European Union published Directive (EU) 2025/1892 of the European Parliament and of the Council of September 10, 2025, amending Directive 2008/98/EC on waste.

The new rule, which will enter into force on October 16, aims to respond to the strengthened and accelerated action by the Union and the Member States required by the European Green Deal and the New Circular Economy Action Plan in order to ensure the environmental sustainability of the food and textile sectors, which are considered by the directive to be sectors with intensive use of resources that can cause negative environmental externalities.

To that end, it introduces a set of measures whose compliance must be ensured by the Member States by bringing into force the necessary legal, regulatory and administrative provisions no later than June 17, 2027.

How does it affect the food sector?

With regards to the food sector, the directive orders Member States to adopt the appropriate measures to prevent the generation of waste throughout the food chain, in primary production, processing and manufacturing, retail and other types of food distribution, in restaurants and catering services, as well as in households.

To this end, it sets out the measures that must be adopted at a minimum, among which some stand out, such as:

• developing information campaigns to raise awareness about the prevention of food waste;
• detecting and addressing inefficiencies in the functioning of the food chain; encouraging the donation of food and other means of redistribution for human consumption;
• or promoting technological solutions that contribute to the prevention of waste.

It also orders Member States to ensure that all relevant actors in the agri-food chain participate in the prevention of the generation of food waste in proportion to their capacity and their role.

Notwithstanding the foregoing, perhaps the most relevant measure consists of the introduction of food waste reduction targets at national level, which must be met no later than December 31, 2030:

• Reduce by 10% the generation of food waste in processing and manufacturing compared to the amount of food waste generated on an annual average between 2021 and 2023.
• Reduce by 30% per capita food waste generation, jointly in retail and other types of food distribution, in restaurants and catering services, as well as in households compared to the amount of food waste generated on an annual average between 2021 and 2023.

It so happens that in Spain Law 1/2025, of April 1, on the prevention of food loss and waste, which had been approved a few months earlier (the summary is available here), adopts a criterion that does not coincide with that of the directive, in quantitative and temporal terms, by contemplating a 50% reduction in per capita food waste at the level of retail and consumers and a 20% reduction in food losses along production and supply chains by 2030, compared to 2020.

The Spanish law, however, provides for the approval of a national plan to control food loss and waste, to be reviewed at least every four years, containing the general objectives and priorities of the control tasks to be carried out by the competent administrations in this matter. Therefore, it will be necessary to keep a close eye on whether the new targets imposed by the directive are incorporated directly into that national plan or into a specific provision that amends or develops the aforementioned law.

What’s new for the textile sector

On the other hand, the directive lays the foundations for the establishment of a homogeneous extended producer responsibility regime in the textile sector by requiring Member States to ensure that producers are subject to such regime with respect to textile, textile-related or footwear products that they place on the market for the first time.

Under this regime, producers must finance the costs of collection, sorting for reuse, preparation for reuse and recycling, as well as recycling and other treatments of used textile, textile-related and footwear products and waste collected from these products, including unsold consumer products considered waste that have been supplied in the territory of the Member States after the entry into force of the new amending directive.

They must also finance the costs of:

• carrying out studies of the composition of mixed municipal waste collected;
• providing information to end users about the impacts and sustainable management of textile products;
• the communication of data on separate collection, reuse and other treatments;
• sorting and recycling technologies;
• and support for research and development of ecodesign of textile products that do not contain substances of concern.

For reasons of proportionality, Member States are ordered to ensure that when such products circulate in the Union, it is avoided that contributions are paid in more than one Member State. For this reason, producers must pay contributions with respect to their extended producer responsibility for the products they place on the market of the Member State in which it is likely that they will become waste, except in the case of products that have left the territory of that country before being sold to end users or becoming waste. There is also an obligation to design more durable, repairable and recyclable products, linking the possible modulation of producers’ financial contributions to ecodesign parameters.

A few days before the publication of the new directive, specifically on September 4, the public information period opened by the Ministry for Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge to gather contributions, observations and suggestions on the draft royal decree regulating textile and footwear products and the management of their waste had concluded. It can therefore be expected that, in addition to the amendments that, as the case may be, must be incorporated into the draft in light of the contributions made during said public information period, the provisions that are necessary to adjust it to the new European rule will be introduced.

A significant milestone for the food and textile sectors

In short, Directive (EU) 2025/1892 marks a significant milestone by strengthening the prevention of food waste through mandatory reduction targets and by imposing for the first time in the European Union the much-demanded homogeneous framework of extended producer responsibility in the textile and footwear sector.

Its transposition will require Spain to review both the recent Law 1/2025 and the draft royal decree on textile products to ensure their full coherence with the new European requirements and thus provide both sectors with the necessary legal certainty.

A period of significant regulatory adjustments is therefore envisaged, so companies and operators in both sectors must be prepared and should even anticipate possible changes in their business models.