New California law forces brands to add clothing recycling networks

Globally people throw away around 92 million tons of textiles every year.

The largest slice of that textile pie is clothes, partly because recycling them is really tough. About 85% of old clothes don’t get recycled. But that rate is about to get better.

California just passed a law that requires textile companies to repurpose or recycle the products they make so they stay out of the landfill.

Companies that sell more than $1 million worth of products in California will be mandated to help fund the state’s textile recycling efforts, “for those materials to be sorted and then reused, whether that’s upcycling, recycling, or sorted and turned into additional feedstock for the next generation of products,” said California Senator Josh Newman, who authored the law.

It also incentivizes manufacturers to make more fabrics that can be recycled once you’re done using them. 

“If you can do that, you’re not only addressing the waste stream landfill question, but you’re really making a difference in environmentalism,” said Newman.

And it’ll have implications beyond California’s borders. Because if H&M or another company makes more recyclable clothes, they’ll likely sell those garments elsewhere. Now the pressure is on to figure out how. 

“Textiles are a contaminant in our current system,” said Joanne Brasch with the California Product Stewardship Council. “Because they tangle, they absorb, and they combust.”

The new law requires textile companies to fund a new nonprofit that will establish and run thousands of textile collection sites up and down the state. They will also have to figure out how, logistically, to transform old clothes into usable fabric that can be made into something new.

Currently, sorting clothes based on their components is a labor-intensive job, but there is technology to make the process faster and cheaper.

Recently in Commerce, California, recycling experts showed off an Amazon-truck-sized gray box of conveyor belts and sensors that flew all the way from Norway to show off its ability to help recycle your old gym shorts.

The machine started up and sounded like a diesel generator. Louisa Hoyes, director of strategic partnerships at Tomra Textiles, held up a piece of clothing in each hand: One was polyester, and one was cotton. The polyester got shot onto one belt, the cotton dropped onto another, and the clothes fell into their correctly labeled bins.

Brasch estimated that if a warehouse were full of machines like this one, Los Angeles would need 10 plants just to manage commercial textile waste.

The state has until July 2028 to implement the law, and the companies have until 2030 to comply.