Businesses that make products need greater incentives to create durable and circular lifecycles for their garments. Good policy is critical to reducing the massive waste in the fashion industry. To deny them consideration in the funding of any textile legislation is misguided and ultimately could incentivize low-quality, high-volume garments to continue to fill our markets-in the hopes that one day they will be “recycled”-without encouraging an economic system that will allow that to happen.Īdditionally, we need a federal bill that makes American manufacturing, including circular apparel manufacturing, more competitive so we can bring jobs and economic development back to our communities most in need. Reuse is practically the only way we keep fashion products in circulation today, and the logistics and infrastructure of resale businesses are costly. Policymakers also should be examining modern textile Extended Producer Responsibility and/or deposit laws that prioritize and incentivize reuse and reward customers and businesses for returning and reselling their products. Policy solutions like closing the de minimis tax loophole, reducing import fees on recycled textiles, second-hand sales and use tax exemptions, and offering priority shipping rates for used apparel should all be explored. It behooves Congress to consider all solutions to address this unaddressed problem. Government Accountability Office raising some of these environmental concerns with fashion waste but also exploring possible areas where both federal and local policies could turn the tide on textile recycling. Chellie Pingree (D-Maine) and Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) recently authored a letter to the U.S. Thankfully, some in Congress are starting to notice. Fashion reuse has immediate value - so much so that customers already are buying, selling and even renting clothing on their own.īut cost-effective, wide-scale adoption of these models, at a magnitude to outpace new production and our landfill capacity, will require concerted efforts to shift cultural, behavioral, policy and shareholder sentiments. The key lies in incentivizing the businesses and innovations that already are involved in the reclamation of these items.
The concept of circular fashion business models that include resale, rental, repair, upcycling and textile recycling have emerged as a potential solution to this challenge. In the midst of the hottest summer on record, textile waste is our landfills’ third-largest emitter of methane, which is responsible for 25 percent of global warming. This not only exacerbates the dwindling space in domestic municipal landfills but also has devastating impacts on the global South, where we can now see piles of discarded clothes from space. Up to 80 percent of our apparel is trashed instead of being reused. Every year, the fashion industry contributes more than 30 billion pounds of textile waste to landfills and incinerators.
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