As we come to the end of the year, we’ve been reflecting on what 2025 has meant for WEFT. Not as a list of activities, but as a story of progress: stronger partnerships, better evidence, deeper policy engagement, and practical tools that help the sector move from ambition to implementation.
One thing has become increasingly clear: the shifting landscape isn’t waiting for perfect conditions. It’s happening now, and it’s happening globally. The question is no longer whether change is coming, but whether the mechanisms we build are credible, fair, and genuinely workable at the scale the system requires.
Working at scale, with real-world complexity
This year, WEFT worked with businesses representing around a third of the UK market by volume. That scale matters because it pushes ideas out of theory and into reality, across different product types, business models and supply chains. It exposes the practical questions that only appear once you start testing: what data you actually have, what you can feasibly measure, what you can change quickly, and where incentives genuinely shift outcomes.
We’ve intentionally focused on system-level learning rather than brand-by-brand storytelling. But we are pleased to end the year by welcoming Primark into the work, and we’re looking forward to what we can learn together as we continue building the evidence base for effective product stewardship and eco-modulation.
The value of connection
Across the year, our conversations have ranged from UK policy discussions to wider international touchpoints at events such as Textiles Exchange, Global Fashion Agenda, Innovation Forum, and the Textile Recycling Expo. We’ve valued the chance to collaborate on ideas with people working on emissions and logistics, circular business models, durable product design, emerging recycling technologies, and national policy frameworks, from the UK to Europe and beyond.
These interactions aren’t networking for its own sake. They’re the work. They’re how assumptions get tested, language becomes shared, and practical alignment starts to form.
Back to Baselines and our academic network
A core part of WEFT’s role is ensuring policy and practice are informed by robust evidence. Through Back to Baselines and our academic network, we’ve continued to strengthen that foundation, including drafting an academic paper and deepening collaboration with Liz Barnes and her team at Manchester Metropolitan University, and with Steve Russell and colleagues at University of Leeds.
This academic backbone matters because the sector is full of strong intentions, but intentions don’t design systems. Evidence does. It helps translate complex technical questions into credible methods and practical insights, and it gives policymakers and industry a firmer footing when decisions have real-world impacts.
Sharing openly – and meeting demand
We also prioritised sharing openly and collaboratively. Our webinars sold out, reinforcing what we hear consistently: people want practical implementable detail, not just high-level intent. They want to understand what eco-modulation could look like in real operating conditions, where real product data is imperfect, timelines are tight, and the need for consistency is growing.
Alongside this, we expanded the ways we support industry learning, including offering 5-SKU analysis to help organisations understand eco-modulation implications at product level. That offer remains available through 2026.
Collaboration
We’ve been pleased to continue to collaborate with UKFT, the BRC and the BFC, and together we extended our collaborative work to WRAP to help its Textile Pact members explore what eco-modulation and evidence-led design could look like in practice, supporting shared learning and helping to build consistency across the sector through our joint webinar. We were thrilled to develop our partnership with the Circular Textiles Foundation to enhance support to brands to help understand how recyclable their products are against an independently verified certification.
Driving policy engagement, grounded in evidence
This year we increased our policy engagement, sharing evidence with task forces, officials and ministers. Our focus has been on helping decision-makers understand not just what is needed, but how systems can be designed to work in practice.
A key part of that is the WEFT Sandbox: a safe, structured environment to test mechanisms, explore scenarios and demonstrate feasibility. It’s where we can show, with real inputs and outputs, that eco-modulation can work and that brands are already using approaches aligned with this direction. The Sandbox is also a way to surface the questions early: where the burden of proof sits, what needs standardisation, and what ‘good enough to implement’ might look like in the real world.
Consumers, behaviour, and what comes next
We also continued our research with consumers, and learned a great deal from how people respond to different signals and EPR charge propositions. This work builds on our 2024 Visible Fee research, and we’re preparing for phase two on customer behaviour, planned for 2026. If we want policy to translate into outcomes we have to understand behaviour, not as a footnote, but as a design driver.
Learning across borders
Textiles policy is moving quickly internationally, and we’ve had constructive conversations and exchanges with stakeholders and policymakers in Wales and Scotland, and internationally with contacts connected to Chile, Switzerland, the Nordics, Australia and the US. These aren’t headline-grabbing announcements, but they matter. They point to growing global alignment around the need for product stewardship, robust evidence, and infrastructure that can cope with scale.
Growing the team
We were delighted to welcome Dr Kate Baker to WEFT this year. Kate brings excellent sector experience and world-leading expertise in real product durability testing, exactly the kind of knowledge needed to support credible and implementable eco-modulation, and to bridge the gap between what we say we value (durability) and what we can prove and incentivise.
Looking ahead to 2026
In 2026, our focus will be on accelerating practical readiness as EPR develops globally. Pace is increasing, and the signals are clear. For example, California has mandated a system to be in place by 2028, with fees collected from 2030 onwards. That matters for global brands and supply chains: preparation needs to start now, not at the point of implementation.
In the UK, we will continue working and collaborating with partners including the Circular Economy Taskforce (CET), sector bodies such as UKFT, BRC and BFC to help shape and stress-test workable approaches. The UK buys and sells globally, and we cannot afford to be left behind as other markets move faster. We look forward to working with CET following their anticipated announcement in January.
And finally: we’ll see you out and about. The next phase of this work will be built, as this year has been, through practical collaboration.
As we all take some time away from our desks and our work, we wish you a relaxing and restorative holiday period, and we look forward to seeing you in 2026.
Kristina & Gerrard