Repairability of textile products

In 2025, 95% of the textiles brought in for repair in a European Repair Café which reports its repairs in the ‘Repair Monitor’, could successfully be repaired. Although this is a higher share of successful repairs compared to the previous two years, overall, there is a declining trend since the first logging of repairs in 2017.

In 2025, a total of 3,157 textile items were brought in for repair at one of the 168 Repair Cafés located across eight EU countries. These Repair Cafés log their activities in the ‘Repair Monitor’, an online tool developed by the Repair Café International Foundation to collect, share, and analyse data on repairs carried out at Repair Cafés. Of the items brought in, 3,000 were successfully repaired, corresponding to a repair success rate of 95%. While this represents a slight increase compared to the previous two years, 94% in 2023 and 93% in 2024, there has been an overall declining trend in repair success rates since data collection began in 2017.

Regarding the types of textile products repaired, trousers and pants, as well as coats and jackets, were the most frequently brought in items, together accounting for 45% of all textile products repaired in 2025. Trousers and pants had a repair success rate of 97%, while 94% of coats and jackets were successfully repaired. Among the most commonly repaired textile products, cardigans had the lowest success rate, at 93%.

In addition to recording the type of product and repair outcome, the Repair Monitor also logs the difficulty of each repair. Analysis of these data shows that the proportion of repairs classified as ‘(rather) difficult’ has increased over time. In 2025, 8% of all repairs were logged as (rather) difficult, compared to 4% in 2017. Tears or holes are the type of defects that are more frequently reported to be (rather) difficult to repair compared to other type of defects. This type of defects is caused by a combination of material properties, construction choices, usage and care, and are partly linked to garment quality.

The consumption of textile products is a key driver of environmental and climate pressures across the value chain. The EU Strategy for Sustainable and Circular Textiles seeks to address these challenges by promoting sustainable practices and reducing overconsumption (EC, 2022). It envisages that all textiles placed on the EU market must be durable, repairable, and recyclable. This objective has been included in the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR), which entered into force in July 2024 and replaces the Ecodesign Directive (EU, 2024a). The ESPR establishes a framework for ecodesign requirements, such as longer use, reparability, recyclability, use of recycled content. It is the main legal instrument translating repairability into enforceable product rules where the European Commission can mandate physical design requirements for durability and repairability, access to spare parts and repair information and avoidance of non-repairable construction techniques. These rules will be introduced via delegated acts specific, expected from 2027 onwards.

In addition, the Right to Repair Directive (Directive (EU) 2024/1799) complements ecodesign rules by promoting repair over replacement (EU, 2024b). It is expected to expand as soon as repairability requirements are defined for textiles under the ESPR.

Monitoring the repairability of textile products is important as it is an indicator for the uptake of ecodesign which on its turn extends product lifetimes. 

Definition

The share of textiles brought in for repair in a European Repair Café which reports its repairs in the ‘Repair Monitor’ and that could successfully be repaired.

Methodology

Data about repaired textile products were retrieved from Repair Monitor (https://www.repairmonitor.org/), which is an online tool developed by the Repair Café International Foundation to collect, share, and analyse data on repairs conducted at Repair Cafés. Data about the product, brand, problem, and repair outcome (successful or not) are entered by volunteers into a central system. The data are aggregated into a public dashboard, allowing for analysis of trends in broken items and repair rate. Data were exported from this dashboard in March 2026 and filtered on the product group ‘textiles’ and on repair cafés located in the EU only.

Although the dataset provides a geographical spread, it is not fully representative of the entire EU27. In addition, there are several limitations to the data that can affect the analysis:

· the assessment of how repairable a product is depends heavily on the personal knowledge and skills of the volunteer.

· the data only represent products that people bring to a Repair Café.

· There is no global standard for categorizing defects or solutions. Different Repair Cafés may use different terms for the same problem, which complicates bulk analysis.

Metadata

Data source: Repair Monitor

Unit: Share of textile products brought in for repair in European Repair Cafés that could successfully be repaired

Temporal coverage: 2017-2025

Geographic coverage: Austria, Belgium, Germany, Finland, France, Ireland, Netherlands, Spain

Literature

· EC (2022), EU Strategy for Sustainable and Circular Textiles

· EU (2024a), Regulation (EU) 2024/1781 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 13 June 2024 establishing a framework for the setting of ecodesign requirements for sustainable products, amending Directive (EU) 2020/1828 and Regulation (EU) 2023/1542 and repealing Directive 2009/125/EC (https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2024/1781/oj)

· EU (2024b), Directive (EU) 2024/1799 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 13 June 2024 on common rules promoting the repair of goods and amending Regulation (EU) 2017/2394 and Directives (EU) 2019/771 and (EU) 2020/1828 (https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A32024L1799)

Repairability of textile products

References and footnotes