Change Is Coming to the ‘Fast Fashion’ Industry

On September 22, 2024, California enacted the Responsible Textile Recovery Act. This legislation, the first of its kind in the nation, addresses the negative, global impact of the fashion industry — the overwhelming of landfills, the filling of waterways with plastics and toxicity, and the creating of 10 percent of global carbon emissions. For the first time, manufacturers will be required to assume responsibility for the recycling of the garments, textiles, footwear, handbags, and more that they make.

Between 2000 and 2015, apparel production doubled, now creating about 150 billion new garments annually. This $2.5 trillion industry employs millions of the most vulnerable people globally — a majority of them women — and even in our country employs some of the lowest-paid labor, e.g., sweatshops in L.A. Clothing today is still rooted in slavery and colonialism — systems of oppression that are far from being fully dismantled. The fashion industry has little transparency, little media coverage of its workings, and, consequently, little regulation. 

Since the 1960s, there has been an alarming growth in textile waste in the U.S., increasing tenfold in the last 60 years. Eighty-five percent of textiles end up in landfills, where they generate methane and release hazardous chemicals into the environment, yet 95 percent of these materials could be reused.

California’s landmark legislation will require clothing companies to establish and join a nonprofit, producer responsibility organization (PRO). This organization must have a complete plan to collect, transport, repair, sort, and recycle textiles by 2026. The program will create many green jobs, ranging from sorting and recycling to administration and management.

Comparable recycling schemes are already in place in France and the Netherlands. In 2007, when France enacted a textile recycling law, only 18 percent of its textile waste was diverted for reuse. Today, that figure is 39 percent. Much of the world’s abandoned apparel winds up in impoverished countries in Asia or Africa, often going to landfills or being burned. The process has been named by some as “waste colonialism.”

California’s Recovery Act aims to establish a more sustainable, circular economy for textiles. By encouraging manufacturers to implement greener, less wasteful processes, the hope is that the “buy, wear once, discard, and repeat” cycle of the “throwaway culture” will be replaced by more sustainable designs. As Governor Newsom said when signing this bill into law, “We have an opportunity to lead by example, not just in the U.S., but globally.”