Imperial Research Proposal Example: Textile design student to circular economy policy (Score 93)

The central research question is: to what extent do the fee-differentiation structures proposed under UK textile EPR create economically sufficient incentives for brands to shift product composition toward technically recyclable fibre blends, and what design modifications would strengthen that alignment? Two subsidiary questions follow. First, which fibre-blend categories present the largest gap between current market prevalence and the recyclability thresholds implied by existing EPR draft guidance? Second, how do analogous EPR schemes in France and the Netherlands — both further advanced in implementation — relate fee schedules to material composition, and what measurable shifts in product-level fibre data followed their introduction? The rationale is bounded and tractable. EPR fee schedules are public documents; fibre composition data are available from brand sustainability reports and the EU Textile Labelling Regulation database; and the French scheme, Refashion, has operated since 2007, providing a sufficient observation window for before-and-after analysis. The research does not require primary survey data as its primary instrument, which makes it feasible within a one-year MSc research timeline. Two literatures are directly relevant. The first is the environmental economics literature on EPR instrument design. Foundational work on fee-modulation mechanisms establishes that EPR effectiveness depends critically on whether fee differentials are large enough to alter manufacturer input decisions rather than simply internalise disposal costs after the fact. Empirical assessments of packaging EPR in Germany and Belgium suggest that fee differentiation by recyclability grade does shift material choices, but that the effect size is sensitive to the fee-to-material-cost ratio — a ratio that has not been calculated for textile fibres in the UK context. The second literature concerns circular economy transitions in the textile sector. Researchers working on business model innovation and material circularity indicators have produced detailed accounts of the technical barriers to fibre-to-fibre recycling: blend contamination, dye chemistry, and the economics of mechanical versus chemical recycling routes. What this literature does not systematically address is the policy transmission mechanism — whether and how regulatory price signals propagate back through supply chains to influence design decisions made two to three years before a garment reaches the market. No published study has mapped UK draft EPR fee structures onto fibre-blend composition data at product category level to assess whether the proposed differentials cross the economic threshold identified in the instrument-design literature as necessary to change input behaviour. This proposal addresses that gap directly. The study uses a three-phase mixed quantitative design. Phase one constructs a product-level fibre composition dataset. Using the EU Textile Labelling Regulation public database and voluntary disclosure data from the sustainability reports of approximately thirty UK-active fashion brands, I will extract fibre blend data for a stratified sample of approximately 600 SKUs across five product categories: knitwear, woven outerwear, denim, jersey basics, and accessories. These categories are selected because they differ systematically in blend complexity and recyclability. Data will be coded against the recyclability classification tiers implied in the UK EPR draft guidance published by DEFRA in 2023. Phase two models the fee-incentive gap. Drawing on the fee-differentiation schedules in the UK draft EPR guidance and the Refashion published fee tables, I will calculate the implied cost differential per kilogram of garment for recyclable versus non-recyclable blends at current proposed fee levels. This will be compared against published estimates of the cost premium for recyclability-compliant materials sourced from industry cost benchmarking reports, including those published by the Textile Exchange. The output is a product-category-level assessment of whether proposed fee differentials are economically sufficient to shift input decisions, operationalised as whether the fee differential exceeds the material cost premium. Phase three conducts a comparative policy analysis of France and the Netherlands. Using Refashion's annual eco-modulation reports and Dutch textile transition monitoring data, I will assess whether fee schedule changes correlate with shifts in the proportion of recyclability-compliant products registered in those schemes over time. This is a descriptive correlation analysis rather than a causal identification strategy; I will be explicit about that limitation and will use it to generate hypotheses about transmission mechanisms rather than causal claims. Data access is the primary feasibility risk. The EU Textile Labelling database, DEFRA EPR draft guidance documents, and Refashion annual reports are all publicly accessible. Brand sustainability reports vary in disclosure granularity; to manage this I have identified a fallback in the Higg Materials Sustainability Index industry benchmark data, which aggregates fibre composition at category level and is available to academic researchers through a data-sharing agreement with the Sustainable Apparel Coalition. I will apply for this access in the first month of the programme. Ethics risk is low: the study uses no human participants and no personal data, and all datasets are either public administrative records or voluntarily published corporate disclosures. The planned timeline allocates months one and two to literature consolidation and dataset construction, months three and four to fee-incentive gap modelling, months five and six to comparative policy analysis, and months seven and eight to integration and write-up, with one month of contingency built in for data access delays. This proposal does not attempt to model consumer behaviour, assess social equity dimensions of EPR, or evaluate recycling infrastructure capacity; those are legitimate extensions but lie outside the bounded research question. Imperial's Centre for Environmental Policy has published work on regulatory instrument design and resource efficiency transitions, including research on waste policy and material flow analysis that is directly adjacent to this project's methodological approach. The research requires no laboratory access, no fieldwork budget, and no specialist software beyond standard statistical packages available through Imperial's site licences. If the Sustainable Apparel Coalition data-sharing agreement is not secured within the first month, the study remains viable using brand-level public disclosures alone, with a reduced sample of approximately twenty brands — sufficient for the descriptive and comparative analysis planned in phases one and three, though the phase-two modelling would carry wider uncertainty bounds, which I would report transparently. The expected contribution is modest and specific: a product-category-level assessment of the incentive sufficiency of UK draft EPR fee structures, with a comparative reference to two implemented European schemes. This is a policy-relevant output that could inform DEFRA's ongoing consultation process and is achievable within the constraints of a one-year research degree.