The Australian Fashion Council (AFC) is enacting a voluntary garment levy this month, while France has become the first country to legislate against fast fashion.

Both nations are looking to 2030 as a goal for adapting to a circular fashion industry.

Australia's Seamless Clothing Stewardship Scheme urges brands to pay a voluntary 4c penalty per garment made available for sale in this country. The scheme promises to invest the funds into supporting brands to become more sustainable.

Circular Economy Textiles Program cofounder Aleasha McCallion says there is a clear urgency to slowing textile waste and believes pushing goals back to 2050 could risk complacency. 

“It’s no big deal to fall short of aspirational goals before 2030, but you have to make goals that are time bound for them to be progressed, prioritised, and funded,” McCallion says. 

An AFC report reveals that more than 1.4 billion garments are placed on the Australian market annually, with more than half ending up in landfill. Seamless aims to save 120,000 tonnes of textile waste from landfill by 2027.

A circular fashion industry would mean a future industry without waste. The model aims to get Australia to a point where less new clothing is manufactured and the clothing that continues to be made would be made with recycled textiles. 

Australians are the second-biggest textile consumers in the world, behind only the United States, buying 56 garments a year per capita. To become circular, consumers must adapt to re-wearing clothes for longer, buying secondhand and only buying new textiles occasionally. 

The first phase of Seamless recruited foundational members from the top 30 Australian retail brands. Big W, Ripcurl, Cotton On Group, The Sussan Group, David Jones, The Iconic, Lorna Jane, and RM Williams were among the first to join. Each donated $100,000 in exchange for an advisory seat on the Seamless committee.

Minister for the Environment and Water Tanya Plibersek said the scheme can remain industry-led on the condition that brands take initiative and sign up, in a speech at the launch of Seamless last June.

"If I don’t see enough movement in a year then I will regulate,” Plibersek said.

As one year of the scheme’s transition phase concludes this month, the levy will be paid by participating stewards for the first time.

Though it cannot yet be said how much of the industry will sign up, the AFC estimates that if 60 per cent of retailers participate, then Seamless could have an annual revenue of $36 million.

If the scheme were to be made mandatory, as proposed by Plibersek, this revenue is projected to reach up to $90 million per year. 

Meanwhile, French lawmakers approved a bill in March to introduce a similar levy-based system.

All garments placed on the French market will now have a €5 levy owed by the retailer, with plans to increase to €10 by 2030.

This makes France the first nation to create legislation aimed at regulating fast fashion, following a series of bills to penalise products that lack extended producer responsibility.

France may appear to be taking more drastic action with a substantially higher penalty per garment mandated by lawmakers, though McCallion said it is difficult to compare it to Australia.

“I don’t think that we can say yet whether or not legislation is going to be the best answer,” she said.

“There is an opportunity with that voluntary approach, which is that industry gets to inform the scheme quite a lot, versus being imposed by a government.” 

One of the scheme’s objectives is to tackle the problem of sustainability at a scale no business could achieve individually.

The high cost of manufacturing sustainably, the lack of infrastructure and skill needed to transform the textile sector were all acknowledged as barriers to change that Seamless aims to alleviate.

While the focus remains on consolidating funds from retailers, the scope of Seamless extends to an attempt to shift consumer behaviour.

A portion of the scheme’s revenue will be invested into expanding education programs and advertisements to encourage and develop skills in mindful consumption.

“We don’t want to load consumers up with all of the responsibility," McCallion said, "but because we all have a shared responsibility, we do need to ask consumers to start somewhere.”