ABSTRACT
The European public sectors are important consumers of textile products and clothing. At the same time the textile and clothing industry is strongly affected by ecological problems. Those negative impacts on the environment occur with varying intensity in different stages of the textile and clothing product life cycle. Therefore, it is becoming extremely important to introduce and develop tools and methodologies that could help public authorities to ensure that textiles products are procured in such a way that it delivers environmental improvements. The latter will contribute to the EU policy objectives for energy, chemical management and resource efficiency, as well as reducing life-cycle costing (LCC). The chapter concentrates on one of the tools i.e. ecolabels. The aim of the chapter is to access the present role of ecolabels for textile and clothing products in the EU public procurement and to point to the main trends and challenges for the future. Based on the secondary data and literature review the paper presents the scope and market size of textile and clothing products in public procurement, discusses the current and possible future use of ecolabels and other criteria sources for textile products in the EU public procurement.
