Discarded clothes are heaped inside a trading company’s warehouse in Goyang, Gyeonggi Province, in this 2023 photo. Courtesy of Daegu Textile Museum
The growing dominance of the fast fashion business model in Korea has generated a massive volume of fabric and other textile waste without a proper treatment or recycling system, fueling calls for new laws to address the problem and encourage companies to develop recycling technologies.
According to an October report from the National Assembly Research Service (NARS), the textile industry in Korea accounts for 10 percent of greenhouse gas emissions across the entire industrial sector. Waste from households and industries add up to 400,000 tons annually, but less than 20 percent gets recycled. The rest are incinerated or disposed of in landfills, either here or in other countries.
Rep. Kim So-hee of the main opposition People Power Party, together with the Ministry of Climate, Energy and Environment and NARS, has begun tackling the issue. Kim is also a member of the National Assembly’s Environment and Labor Committee.
They argue that the most urgent measure is to introduce laws to define the problem and force producers to treat their own waste by enforcing an extended producer responsibility (EPR) policy. That should be followed by the introduction of a state-run recycling system, the development of recycling technologies by private firms and promotion of more responsible textile consumption to citizens, the group added.
The three sides are currently mulling over how to define “textile waste” for both households and business operations. Another priority is to introduce EPR to domestic firms as smoothly as possible.
“The introduction of EPR will first have to be agreed upon by textile producers here. Then, the regulation will have to be tested for about two years before enforcing it,” said Kim Kyung-min, a legislative research officer at NARS who authored the October report.
Although EPR has yet to be enforced domestically in Korea, she expects the global move toward environment, social and governance (ESG) initiatives will encourage firms here to accept new regulations.
“We can push EPR outside the country’s legal boundary as well,” she said. “Apple, under its ESG commitment, forced its strict recycling regulations upon its primary and secondary partner firms manufacturing iPhones. European countries have also propagated special textile strategies within their domestic economies. Reining in textile waste is a global movement now. At the climate ministry, either the first vice minister who oversees waste issues or the second vice minister who oversees the circular economy will have to spearhead the textile waste issue.”
Rep. Kim So-hee speaks during the National Assembly’s government audit from Oct. 13 to Nov. 6. Courtesy of Rep. Kim’s office
It is necessary to introduce EPR across all domestic producers, but the textile industry is especially urgent because of its mounting environmental impact, according to Rep. Kim’s office. The first-term lawmaker said that waste monitoring has been so neglected here that accurately tallying the volume or how much is being recycled is currently impossible.
“We brought up the issue during the National Assembly’s government audit period from October to November, saying textile waste should be on top of the country’s EPR list,” an aide to the lawmaker said. “Not just textiles — EPR must expand to broader types of waste to bolster their recycling.”
The increase in textile waste mainly derives from the rise of fast fashion, with brands churning out around 900,000 tons of clothing annually in Korea. Most of the clothing produced is worn only for short periods of time, according to calculations by NARS. Discarded clothes go through a downcycling process, with many of them sent to secondhand retail outlets. The remainder, about 40 percent, is exported to Southeast Asia or Africa, or recycled here for low added-value products like single-use items or industrial insulators. Lastly, they are processed at incinerators and landfills.
Kim Kyung-min, citing similar cases in France, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States in her NARS report, warned that Korean firms could be affected by the European Union’s enforcement of new regulations mandating the separate collection of textile waste. She added that companies here are reluctant to develop recycling technologies such as renewable textiles because they are unsure about the products’ profitability and quality.
“It’s highly probable that Korean textile firms, without adhering to EPR, will face trade barriers in the global market. The government must introduce a state-run waste collection system for more transparent circulation and stop exporting them to other countries,” Kim said.
She added, “In 2005, Korea introduced the world’s first laws to treat food waste, and they remain effective until now. It demonstrates that legal improvement and social consensus can accomplish a meaningful change in the short term.”