Imagine you invested in a brand-new pair of jeans and decided it was time to part ways with them after wearing them for a few years. You might discard them, or consider selling, trading, or donating them to a nearby thrift store if you want a more environmentally responsible solution.
In any case, it is yours to bear to give those jeans to someone else and hope for the best. However, a recent measure out of California that addresses the expanding issue of fashion and textile waste may alter the way we discard our stuff by requiring garment manufacturers to set up a system for recycling the items they sell.
If approved, Californians will be allowed to donate their unwanted and even damaged clothing and home textiles to charities, thrift shops, and other easily accessible locations around the state for recycling and sorting. The Responsible Textile Recovery Act, a first-of-its-kind legislation, mandates that manufacturers of clothing, towels, beds, and upholstery create and finance a statewide reuse, repair, and recycling program for their goods.
The urgent need for textile waste management
The US produced more than 17 million tonnes of textile waste in 2018, a nearly tenfold increase since 1960. Surprisingly, 85% of textiles are disposed of in landfills, where they release methane gas and contaminate our groundwater and soil with chemicals and dyes. Furthermore, only 15% of textiles and apparel are recycled, even though 95% of the components—such as buttons, zippers, yarns, fabrics, and fibres—can be recycled.
Josh Newman, a Democratic state senator who introduced the bill, was prompted to act by these alarming figures. About the bill, which was approved by state lawmakers last month with overwhelming support and is currently sitting on California Governor Gavin Newsom’s desk, he said, “We worked really hard to consult with and eventually to align all of the stakeholders in the life cycle of textiles so that at the end there was no opposition.” Given the scope of the issue and the wide range of interests involved, that is an incredibly difficult task.
Industry and environmental impact of the bill
More than 150 environmental organisations, municipal garbage management, and shops including Ikea, Everlane, and Goodwill endorsed Newman’s measure. Advocates of the historic law claim that it would facilitate the sector’s shift to a sustainable and circular economy, potentially opening up new avenues for environmentally friendly manufacturing and consumption as well as generating over a thousand green jobs.
The measure would place the state’s recycling agency in charge of manufacturing, encouraging them to develop greener designs and less wasteful methods. This would hold manufacturers accountable for the full lifecycle of their products.
The companies who manufacture clothing and other textiles sold in California have until 2026 to establish a non-profit organisation that will design the collection locations, mail-back programs, or other alternatives, thus some details about how the entire system would operate are still unknown.
At most, the program won’t be running until 2028.
“We are changing our business towards circularity and lowering emissions because we have a big role to play as a global fashion retailer,” said Randi Marshall, regional head of sustainability and public affairs for H&M Americas. She continued by saying that the business is already familiar with how this can operate because France and the Netherlands have such rules.
In France, this implies that items can be recycled by taking them to one of 47,000 collection stations. In addition, repairs are subsidised to encourage people to keep their possessions longer.
More carbon emissions are produced worldwide by the fashion sector than by foreign travel and maritime shipping combined, accounting for approximately 10% of all industrial pollutants. The growing environmental catastrophe is mostly due to the emergence of “fast fashion,” or inexpensive, low-quality clothing that is only worn seldom.
Concerns have been raised by some that the law may impact smaller and mid-sized brands and increase consumer expenses. However, sustainable fashion designer Yotam Solomon, who founded the independent genderless Virtue brand in Los Angeles, stated that he was in favour of the legislation. “I think [California’s new law] is something that should have been done a long time ago,” he said. “It’s unfortunately this industry that allowed this to happen.”
Newman projected that the cost to producers will be less than 10 cents per garment or cloth, and stated that consumers shouldn’t experience price hikes.
We will eventually have to pay for fashion and textile waste, according to Dr. Joanne Brasch, director of advocacy and outreach for the California Product Stewardship Council, which is one of the sponsors of the new legislation. “If the cities have to figure it out, our taxes will go up, and if we have to fix environmental damage, our garbage bills will go up,” she declared.
Over 1.2 million tons of textiles were thrown away in California in 2021 alone, costing the state’s taxpayers over $70 million.
Brasch pointed out that despite spending millions of dollars on their efforts to go circular, companies like The North Face, Reformation, Gap, and Patagonia had trouble bridging the waste and production sectors.
Global fashion waste and extended producer responsibility
Reusable textiles have historically found a prosperous secondhand market in thrift stores, charitable organisations, and clothes collectors. But donations that are broken or useless wind up in landfills or foreign markets in the global south; Ghana, for example, receives up to 15 million abandoned clothes per week, referred to by locals as “dead white man’s clothes.” From the Chilean deserts to the Dandora dumpsite in Kenya, disturbing images of mountains of used apparel have been spotted everywhere.
Advocates for improved fashion waste management, like the Or Foundation, are pushing for an end to waste colonialism and support extended producer responsibility policies, such as the one California is putting in place.
The first nations to enact laws to address the issue of textile waste were Europe. In 2007, France approved a regulation about textile recycling, as the country could previously only divert 18% of its textile waste back for reuse. The diversion rate in the nation is currently over 39%. It is anticipated that the Netherlands’ 2023 initiative and the European Union’s 2025 mandate for extended textile collection in all member states will make a significant impact on the issue of fashion waste.
Scientist and former UC Davis professor Brasch stated, “We learned from a lot of the advocates involved in France’s program and they’ve been very active to make sure that what California does can be replicated positively.” Being the best doesn’t automatically equate to being the first [in the US]. We expect to hear from more states so I can give them advice on how to increase the bar.
(Tashia Bernardus)