The issue concerns second-hand clothing bearing designer labels that may or not be genuine with manufacturers expecting graders to be able to distinguish one from the other.
“We can't tell which is which,” commented Mr Klaus Lwer of Germany, President of the Textiles Division of BIR, the world recycling federation.
He said it was not simply a matter of counterfeiting by rogue producers and claimed that household names among clothing manufacturers were making two versions of the same garment – one aimed at the designer market and the other at mass outlets, but both bearing the same famous label. He contended that in drafting laws against counterfeiting, legislators had simply forgotten about second-hand goods, and recyclers were now expected to step in with a solution.
Mr Frithjof Schepke, also from Germany, quoted a manufacturer's complaint about fake jeans being offered for sale in a second-hand clothing store. Yet the company refused to explain the difference between these and the genuine product for fear of making counterfeiting even easier.
Honorary president of the BIR Textiles Division, Benson Greenberg of the UK, commented that the problem for recyclers was severely practical. A manufacturer might obtain a court injunction prohibiting the sale of clothing it held to be counterfeit, but a recycling company would be unable to afford to contest it.
Tariff burdens add complexity
Turning to another set of legalistic problems, Mr Schepke spoke of the loss of preferential tariff arrangements for used clothing in the European Union. This meant that the zero tariff rate no longer applied and these goods came into the non-preferential category, attracting customs duty up to 20% of the value. Payment could even be required retroactively, so that, for example, duty could be charged on second-hand clothing imported by Poland from the EU as long as five years ago. He felt that that it was likely that the importers would be unable to pay and the situation was extremely complex and quite absurd.
There was the allied issue of certificates of origin, which supposedly had to be issued wherever these so-called “waste” materials were recovered. Such a certificate had been necessary since June 2000, and this bureaucratic requirement had generated many different interpretations that constituted yet more obstacles to trade. The German Textiles Recycling Association had sought redress through the courts, but so far the matter had not been resolved.
Mr Lwer observed that the sector was faced with a multiplicity of difficulties simply because sorted textile products were categorised erroneously as waste. A questionnaire seeking the view of EU governments on whether sorted materials were regarded as products or waste had been sent to BIR member federations and firms but had drawn only five replies. Two opted for the “product” classification and one offered different answers depending on which ministry was making the response. There had to be a better understanding, he stressed, and a final decision should be taken at EU level to remove sorted textiles from the scope of waste legislation.
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