One EU individual on average discards 11 kg of textiles a year. Globally, a consignment of textiles is buried or incinerated every second. The global production of textiles almost doubled over the period from 2000 to 2015. Clothing and footwear consumption is expected to grow by 63% by 2030. In this article we’ll be looking at some of the EU’s proposed measures to address the problem of textile waste, as well as discussing what’s being done in Latvia and what we can expect in taxation.

As Europe is pressing ahead with its Green Deal, the relevance of environmental taxation is growing rapidly in Latvia and across the EU. Our experience suggests that Latvian companies are much better informed about the natural resource tax (NRT) treatment than foreign persons doing business in Latvia. This article serves as a reminder of the NRT treatment for foreign persons. This information may also help Latvian companies identify cases where a foreign supplier has Latvian NRT obligations, which are either not discharged or wrongly shifted onto the Latvian company.

With environmentally friendly practices, such as waste sorting and recycling, becoming the order of the day, the natural resource tax (NRT) treatment is a hot topic too. As you know, packaging is one of the items subject to NRT. The obligation to pay tax or the right to take an exemption lies with the person who is the first to sell goods in packaging in Latvia, including foreign companies supplying their goods to Latvian companies. There are plans to amend the NRT Act on how foreign persons may take an exemption.