Fast fashion is filling California landfills. Fortunately, a fix is ​​in sight

By Mattias Wallander, especially for CalMatters

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As the CEO of a textile reuse company, I spend a lot of time thinking about what happens to clothes after people are done with them. This is my job and it has a profound impact on the planet.

I have lived and worked in California for over 25 years. I know the pride Californians feel as a national leader in sustainability. That reputation is well-earned in many areas, but when it comes to textiles, California lags behind.

almost 1.2 million tons of textiles are landfilled in California every year. The the state spends about $99 million a year to throw away clothes that in many cases still have a useful life. In the United States, about 85% of discarded clothing ends up in landfills or incinerated.

The problem goes beyond what consumers throw away. The fashion system is built on overproduction and overconsumption. Americans are buying far more clothing than a generation ago, much of it of lower quality and designed for short-term trends rather than long-term use.

About 5 billion pounds of customer returns are deposited in the US each year.

Many people think that recycling will solve this problem. In time it should play a bigger role. Unfortunately, less than 1% of collected textiles are recycled back into fibers for remanufacturing, and fiber-to-fiber recycling remains expensive, chemically intensive, and difficult to scale.

That means California still can’t recycle its way out of the textile crisis. What California can do is build a stronger system to collect clothes and keep usable textiles in circulation longer.

Senate Bill 707also known as the Responsible Textile Recovery Act of 2024, gives California the framework. The law shifts the cost of managing end-of-life textiles from taxpayers to the manufacturers who place these products on the market.

This basic principle of extended producer responsibility has already proven effective in other sectors. Textiles are long overdue for the same accountability.

Passed well, this law could divert hundreds of thousands of tons of clothing from landfills, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and creating 1,000 to 2,500 green sector jobs in California.

But the law will fail if the state ignores one of the most practical, scalable tools already available: clothes collection bins.

Collection bins are one of the easiest, least-friction ways for people to part with unwanted clothing. They are available 24/7, do not require an appointment and meet people where they already are, in shopping malls, supermarkets and other familiar places.

People want to do the right thing with their unwanted clothes. But it should be convenient and affordable. If we make it harder for people to donate or reuse clothes, more of them will end up in the bin.

Many local collection rules in California were written before recycling became a priority. Zoning restrictions, permit costs, lot-based restrictions and inconsistent municipal regulations are quietly stifling the expansion of collection infrastructure. In places like downtown Los Angeles, Oakland and Irvine, the rules are so restrictive that textile picking can only take place on private land.

In our research, collectors operating throughout California estimated that they could increase collection volumes by 50% to 75% if these regulatory barriers were eased. This could make the difference between SB 707 becoming a workable system or a missed opportunity.

California is at a pivotal moment. The state’s textile recovery system is designed in practice, not just in theory. New regulations will need to be created and implemented.

The clothes on our backs will one day be part of California’s litter problem. They can also be part of his climate solution. A fix is ​​available, but only if we scale up the infrastructure to support it.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.