How a New California Law Makes Fashion Brands Pay to Recycle Clothes
Key takeaways
- California is the first U.S. state requiring apparel and textile producers to fund collection, repair and recycling of their own products.
- Regulators picked Landbell USA to run the program; producers must join by July 1, 2026, though penalties don’t apply until 2030.
- New York and the European Union are advancing their own textile rules, and industry groups want one federal standard instead of a state-by-state patchwork.
California has become the first U.S. state to make clothing and textile brands responsible for what happens to their products after people throw them away. Governor Gavin Newsom signed Senate Bill 707, the Responsible Textile Recovery Act, in September 2024. The bill’s author, State Senator Josh Newman, tied the measure to fast fashion’s business model, arguing it drives both carbon emissions and a throwaway culture among shoppers, according to Fashion Dive’s report on the bill’s passage.
The law is now moving from statute book to working program. California’s Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery, known as CalRecycle, selected a nonprofit called Landbell USA in February 2026 to run the state’s textile recycling system. Every qualifying producer that sells clothing or textiles in California has to sign on to that program by July 1, 2026.
What Counts as a Covered Product
SB 707 defines two categories of covered goods. “Apparel” includes undergarments, shirts, pants, skirts, dresses, overalls, swimwear and formal wear, according to the bill text on file with the California Legislature. “Textile articles” cover household fabric goods such as blankets, curtains, towels, bedding and linens made from natural or synthetic fibers.
The law excludes military and protective equipment, along with products regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, such as menstrual products. Single-use items like paper towels are excluded as well.
The Waste at Stake
About 1.2 million tons of textiles entered California’s waste stream in 2021, the figure cited when Governor Newsom signed the Responsible Textile Recovery Act into law in September 2024.
Who Counts as a Producer
The bill defines “producer” with a tiered fallback. Responsibility starts with a manufacturer that has a physical presence in California. If none exists, it shifts to the brand owner, then to an importer, and finally to a distributor, retailer or wholesaler.
Online marketplaces have a separate duty: they must report third-party sellers whose California sales exceed $1 million a year, according to a summary of the law published by law firm DLA Piper. Companies with less than $1 million in annual global revenue are exempt from the statute altogether.
How the Operator Was Chosen
The law set a January 1, 2026 deadline for organizations to apply to run the state’s program as a Producer Responsibility Organization, or PRO. Three groups applied: Circular Textile Alliance, Landbell USA and Textile Renewal Alliance, according to a CalRecycle public bulletin.
CalRecycle had until March 1, 2026 to choose one, and selected Landbell USA on February 27, 2026. The American Apparel and Footwear Association later challenged the selection in court, but the Superior Court of California, County of Sacramento, tentatively denied its request to block the July 1 registration deadline, according to Jones Day. The organization is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit tied to Germany’s Landbell Group, which already runs one of the world’s first textile PROs through a European affiliate, per coverage in Recycling Today.
Landbell has said its plan will prioritize building out reuse and repair infrastructure, including making repair services available through retailers and community organizations, and that it will run consumer education campaigns, according to Recycling Today. The National Stewardship Action Council endorsed the selection, calling it “a critical milestone in moving landmark policy into operational practice,” and its executive director will sit on Landbell’s advisory committee alongside people with expertise in eco-design, footwear deconstruction and community creative hubs.
The Deadlines and the Money
Producers must join Landbell USA by July 1, 2026. CalRecycle’s implementing regulations take effect no earlier than July 1, 2028, and full enforcement begins July 1, 2030 — the date by which Landbell must have an approved collection and recycling plan in place, per the bill text and CalRecycle’s program overview.
Landbell must fund the entire operation through fees charged to member producers. The statute calls for “eco-modulated” fees, meaning products that are more durable, recyclable or made with recycled content are charged less, according to DLA Piper’s summary of the law. Separately, the fees Landbell pays to CalRecycle to cover the department’s own regulatory costs are capped at those actual and reasonable costs and are deposited into a state Textile Stewardship Recovery Fund.
The PRO must also open a minimum number of collection sites — ten per county, or one for every 25,000 residents, whichever is larger — keep a six-month operating reserve, undergo independent annual audits, and file detailed annual reports on what was collected, reused and recycled, broken down by fiber type. Producers that fail to join an approved plan by 2030 face civil penalties of up to $10,000 a day for ordinary violations, or up to $50,000 a day for violations the state finds were intentional.
Producers that fail to join an approved plan by 2030 face civil penalties of up to $10,000 a day, or up to $50,000 a day for intentional violations.
The Waste Numbers Behind the Law
State officials point to the scale of textile waste to justify the program. Coverage of the bill’s signing cited a figure of about 1.2 million tons of textiles entering California’s waste stream in 2021. Sources disagree on how much of that material could have been diverted: Fashion Dive’s report on the bill cited a claim that 95% of discarded textiles are reusable or recyclable, while CalRecycle’s own program overview states that 85% of discarded textiles end up in landfills. It is not clear from the materials reviewed whether the two figures are measuring the same population of discarded goods, so the discrepancy should be treated as unresolved rather than reconciled.
Before regulations take effect, the program requires a statewide assessment of existing recovery systems. One industry consultant described that step, in comments published by recycling advisory firm RRS, as “a critical step to collecting information about recovery systems that are available today, how they’re performing and what gaps need to be filled to meet the requirements of the law.”
A Pattern Spreading Beyond California
Other states are moving on their own rules. New York’s Senate Bill S.9740 would require sellers with more than $100 million in annual sales to publish greenhouse gas inventories and set reduction targets, though the bill remained in committee as of the most recent review by law firm Jones Day.
The European Union has moved on a related but distinct track. Its Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation took effect July 19, 2026, barring large companies from destroying unsold apparel, footwear and accessories; the restriction extends to medium-sized companies in 2030. The European Commission has estimated that 4% to 9% of unsold textiles in Europe are destroyed each year, producing about 5.6 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions, according to Jones Day’s summary of the regulation.
Industry groups are watching the state-by-state approach in the U.S. with some unease. Rachel Kibbe, chief executive of American Circular Textiles, said in comments reported by Fashion Dive that “a unified federal approach would streamline the system” rather than leaving companies to navigate separate rules in each state. The American Apparel and Footwear Association has said it is deepening its relationships with producer-responsibility organizations across industries as California’s textile program stands up.
Photo: Andre m · CC BY-SA 3.0 · via Wikimedia Commons
