RFID for Transparency, Traceability and End-of-Life handling of Textiles - The Importance of Harmonized Legislation

Abstract

At present a lot of garments and home textiles are thrown away as soon as they are judged to be out of style or worn out. Only in Sweden over 200 tonnes of textiles end up as household waste every day. To achieve and strive for a circular economy, The European Commission has pinpointed textiles as one important focus area. As a consequence, it is important to significantly increase collection rates and textile material recycling. Development of new technologies are therefore required in terms of recycling processes at industrial scale, but in order to achieve this scaling, efficient and specific sorting processes are required. This sorting must be able to consider several parameters such as fiber content and composition, as well as possible presence of harmful chemicals, since these parameters have significant implications for subsequent processes. Information systems based on RFID technology, where digital information carriers bring the essential information to the end-of-life-handling of textiles is found to be a promising solution. By means of integrating RFID tags in garments and textiles, all relevant information needed for further handling at end-of-life can be made available. However, since July 2019, the RoHS directive includes category 11, a catch-all category. In category 11, passive RFID tags are covered, implying that garments with integrated passive RFID need to be CE-labelled. Apart from causing huge obstacles to reach circularity and transparency in the textile value chains, the legislation appears inconsistent to what the European Commission highlights as important for implementing the Circular Economy Package; which is the need for information systems, innovative tracing technologies and strategies for information sharing.