Following the adoption of the Circular Economy Action Plan, the European Commission has also announced a new European strategy for sustainable and circular textiles, aiming to make textile and clothing products more sustainable.

The strategy includes, among other things, the issuing of a digital passport for these products, initiatives to raise consumer awareness, reduce overproduction and overconsumption of these products, prevent the destruction of unsold products, and address the problem of their waste.

By taking initiatives and awareness-raising actions that will highlight a range of sustainability and corporate social responsibility issues for clothing and fashion companies, the aim is to change the consumer behaviour of European citizens in terms of the criteria of their choices when buying clothing and fashion products.

In recent years, consumer choices in clothing and fashion have been based, to a very large extent, on the lower price of fast fashion products compared to sustainable fashion products, without citizens considering several other environmental and social factors that create this competitive disadvantage of sustainable fashion products compared to fast fashion products.

In the context of the fourth interim deliverable of the EcoFashionEU project, the present Toolkit was created as an aid and training tool for trainers for Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), that would eventually take an active role in initiatives aiming to change the consumer behavior of citizens.

The tools of the toolkit are based both on the contents of the 35-hour training program for small and medium-sized fashion enterprises, which was successfully implemented focusing on the sustainability and corporate social responsibility issues of sustainable fashion, and on a series of specific tools, which were identified through archive research with the contribution of the special expert in sustainable fashion issues, Ms. Styliani Parasha, who as a partner of CSR HELLAS, had the scientific responsibility for the training and implementation of the above-mentioned program.

At the same time, it was considered appropriate to include in this toolkit, a brief reference to:

• the new framework for the functioning of the clothing and fashion market
• the factors and issues that directly affect clothing and fashion products, resulting in the creation of a competitive disadvantage of sustainable fashion products over fast fashion products in terms of production costs and final consumer price.
•  the role, which is deemed appropriate, to be played by CSOs and NGOs within the EcoFashionEU project to inform and raise consumer awareness in the effort to change the consumption model.

Finally, the previous three intermediate deliverables of the EcoFashionEU project are also included in the Annex of the toolkit, aiming to provide more information on the main objectives of the project and to assist the staff of CSOs and NGOs, who will be called upon to undertake the task of informing and raising consumer awareness on the sustainability of clothing and fashion products.

Below you can read the toolkit: