Bills to reduce fashion’s impact advance in multiple states

Buoyed by celebrities and brands including Patagonia and Stella McCartney, bills requiring fashion businesses to share their emissions, water and waste impacts are gaining traction in four states. On Feb. 4, California followed New York, Massachusetts and Washington by introducing legislation to force apparel companies with revenues of $100 million or more to disclose and clean up their environmental footprints.

The goal is to shrink the negative impacts of an industry that contributes as much as 8 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to the United Nations.

The California Fashion Environmental Accountability Act (AB 405) would require large clothing and footwear brands to slash their emissions to satisfy the Paris Agreement, as well as reduce harmful chemicals and prevent water pollution. Those who don’t would pay up to 2 percent of annual revenues toward environmental causes. Resale brands and smaller multibrand retailers would be exempt.

Th bill, known as the Fashion Act, phases in emissions disclosure mandates for Scopes 1 and 2 in 2026, followed by Scope 3 the following year. In 2027, brands would also have to report details about their environmental due diligence. In 2028, those reports would include the usage of water and the flow of chemicals into wastewater due to dyeing, washing and printing garments.

The introduction of the bill came about a month after California enacted the nation’s first law to require apparel brands to help manage their products at the end of life. That law, the Responsible Textile Recovery Act of 2024, requires large apparel brands to use a nonprofit producer responsibility organization (PRO) to report how they will collect, repair, reuse or recycle their branded clothes and textiles by the middle of 2026. The extended producer responsibility (EPR) law by 2030 will subject non-compliant companies to fines of up to $50,000 day.

Textiles make up 3 percent of waste in California and its fastest growing material in landfills, according to the state’s Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery. That amounted to 1.2 million tons of textiles wasted in 2021.

Growing state efforts

The growing number of proposals show that addressing fashion’s climate impact is no longer optional, according to Rachel Van Metre Kibbe, CEO of American Circular Textiles (ACT) in Brooklyn. “State-level fashion acts are meaningful because they could force brands to take real responsibility for their supply chain emissions in some of the world’s largest economies,” she said.

In Washington state, the Fashion Sustainability Accountability Act (House Bill 1107) emerged in December. Starting in 2027, it would make companies disclose climate emissions and the use of chemicals of concern, in addition to defining marketing terms such as “green” and describing how they manage unsold goods.

In Massachusetts, bill H420 has been pending in the state House of Representatives since February 2023. While it lacks requirements around waste and water, it would force businesses to disclose all of their suppliers, and report on the risks of environmental and human harm within their supply chains.

The template for these bills originated in New York from lawyer and entrepreneur Maxine Bédat, who introduced a bill known as the Fashion Act in January 2022. For three years in a row, however, the Empire State has failed to pass the bill, despite bipartisan support, due to lobbying from business groups.

Brands including Eileen Fisher, Reformation, Ganni, Patagonia, Everlane, Rothys, Stella McCartney and Cotopaxi back the original New York legislation. So do players in the resale and reverse logistics markets, such as ThredUp and Trove, as well as recycling players, such as Circ and Evrnu. Joining them are the Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council, Canopy and other environmental nonprofits. Celebrities from Angelina Jolie to Zooey Deschanel have thrown in endorsements, too.

“Our industry is getting crushed by foreign trash fashion players Shein and Temu, Chinese brands, that flood the market with fossil fuel fabricated clothing, riddled with toxic chemicals, that end up on our kids and in our waterways,” said Betina Baumgarten, legal and policy advisor with the New Standard Institute (NSI), founded by Bédat. “The current ways are bad for consumers and bad for American business.”

Fashion businesses set the standards within the New York and California bills, she added. “Asking brands to fulfill their promises and comply with their own industry’s standards is not unreasonable.”

The NSI has gathered input from stakeholders over four years and closely tracked European Union regulations to align their requirements with the New York Fashion Act, according to Baumgarten.

Opposition

However, business groups such as the American Apparel and Footwear Association (AAFA) have lobbied against New York’s Fashion Act. The Washington, D.C., trade group of 1,100 brands has said the bill will unrealistically burden companies.

The California Retailers Association, whose board of directors includes corporate leaders from the Gap and Macy’s, opposes the similar bill in that state.

Layering these laws onto existing corporate climate regulations can create a compliance nightmare for business, according to ACT’s Kibbe. “As the federal government pulls back on emissions regulations and states lead the charge, we risk pushing brands into compliance paralysis — where fear of doing something ‘wrong’ outweighs the urgency of doing something right,” she said.

For example, California’s Climate Corporate Data Accountability Act (CCDAA) will start requiring companies making over $1 billion to report emissions, including Scope 3 supply chain impacts, in 2026. If you add in AB 405, Kibbe says, “it sounds great in theory, but poses real challenges in practice. If a brand falls under both laws, they could be stuck with two conflicting expectations: one that says ‘just disclose,’ and another that says ‘cut your emissions now,’ with potentially separate compliance frameworks and duplicate fines.”

Meanwhile, in both California and New York state, apparel companies are struggling to satisfy bans as of January against per- and polyfluoroalkyl (PFAS) chemicals, used in water-resistant rain coats and hiking shoes. The “forever chemicals,” linked to cancer, hormonal disorders and developmental delays, have come to pollute nearly every ecosystem and human bloodstream since 3M and DuPont introduced them to consumer products in the mid-20th century.

Federal bills

Hope continues among sustainability advocates for a national Americas Act, introduced in March 2024 by Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., and Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo. It has piqued bipartisan interest for providing $14 billion in incentives for circular fashion and domestic supply chains.

The bill would also close the de minimis provision in trade policy, which enables shipments of under $800 to bypass duties. That loophole has helped to turbocharge fast fashion brands such as Shein and Temu, which jet tens of thousands of small packages into the U.S. each day. President Donald Trump closed the exemption for imports from China on Feb. 4, only to pause that three days later with a new executive order.

ThredUp’s general counsel and chief strategy officer, Alon Rotem, plans to lobby policymakers in the nation’s capital later in February to support the bill. “There’s actually enough common ground there that I’m optimistic something could happen, which I think is a net positive for the American economy, for the environment and for the working class as well,” he said.

Meanwhile, the Fashioning Accountability and Building Real Institutional Change (FABRIC) Act remains under consideration in Congress after Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., reintroduced it in September 2023 to improve conditions and pay for some of the nation’s 90,000 garment workers.

[Connect with the circular fashion community and gain insights to accelerate the shift to a circular economy at Circularity, April 29-May 1, Denver, CO.]