Lawmakers in California have introduced an ambitious bill aimed at reducing the fashion industry’s ballooning environmental footprint. It’s a bold step, but will it have any legs under the current US administration?
If passed, the Fashion Environmental Accountability Act, or Fashion Act, would force brands selling in California with over $100 million in revenue to set and achieve climate targets in line with the Paris Agreement and put in place controls on chemical and water management, which proponents say will protect workers and consumers alike. Brands not in compliance would be subject to a fine of up to 2 per cent of annual global revenue, which would go towards remediating affected communities.
“California has invested so much into being a green leader, it only makes sense that they would advance basic regulation that both supports local industry and ensures that their investments are not undone by the unchecked proliferation of exploitative trash fashion,” says Maxine Bédat, executive director of sustainability think tank New Standard Institute and co-sponsor of the bill with State Assembly member Dawn Addis.
With support from dozens of environmental groups and green-focused brands like Patagonia and Reformation, the Fashion Act follows similar bills already introduced in New York and Massachusetts. Getting them enacted, however, has proven challenging: neither have passed despite several rounds of revision. The bill may fare better in California, a trailblazer in green legislation, which just passed another landmark bill forcing brands to invest in recycling their products. Faced with historic fires and landfills overwhelmed by textile waste, California has a stake in cleaning up the industry.
While the bill would be a historic win for green regulation, some question how far a state-led bill can go in effectively — and equitably — reforming a fragmented industry that has struggled to reduce impacts, particularly under a climate-hostile federal administration that risks derailing fashion’s sustainability goals and ramping up fossil fuel dependence.
Who should clean up the fashion mess?
Despite sweeping commitments by apparel brands, the industry’s footprint continues to grow, even though it needs to shrink by 45 per cent by 2030 to stay within a 1.5°C trajectory, according to the Apparel Impact Institute. The Fashion Act is designed to get companies back on track and level the playing field for brands at a competitive disadvantage for standing by their commitments. To do that, experts say brands will need to invest in their suppliers, many of whom are too financially strained to meet science-based targets.
“Prices paid to manufacturers continue to decline, with many companies not paying their factories enough to cover basic compliance, much less these additional well-intentioned sustainability requests,” says Elizabeth Cline, author and lecturer of fashion policy at Columbia University. “Without an explicit mechanism to improve purchasing practices, the act risks pushing more burden on the supply chain without the needed support.”
Sheng Lu, director of the University of Delaware’s department of fashion and apparel studies, echoed concerns about the ability of developing countries to keep up with reporting requirements imposed by brands and retailers. “Collecting this data requires strong support and close collaboration from suppliers throughout the supply chain,’ he says, adding that fashion companies may require a longer transition period to implement the bill as a result.
Bedát insists that the bill fairly distributes the financial burden, which she says is one reason many big brands have yet to sign on. “There’s specific language around purchasing practices and disclosure on how much money they’re putting into reaching these targets. We’ve very much included the suppliers’ perspective.” The bill stipulates that brands would have to report on due diligence expenditures, but is less specific on purchasing practices.
Matthew Guenther, director of environmental sustainability at TAL Apparel Limited, a Hong Kong-based textile manufacturer, commented on LinkedIn that he supports regulation that levels the playing field for greener brands but worries the bill approaches the problem from “the wrong direction”, since it places “the burden on brands to ‘fix’ their suppliers… even though consumer lifestyles in developed markets have a far greater aggregate impact”. Driven by the rise of fast fashion brands like Shein and Temu, Americans are buying more clothes than ever, many of which end up in the Global South, polluting waterways and suffocating local infrastructure. Experts insist that consumer behaviour is triggered and trained by brands.
Can states fill the gap in fashion climate action?
Within hours of taking office, President Donald Trump pulled the United States out of the Paris Agreement and declared a “national energy emergency” to ramp up fossil fuel production. Those orders will almost certainly stymie the fashion industry’s efforts to decarbonise, though there could be a silver lining: “As with the first Trump term, climate activists are shifting their attention to state legislatures where they can make the greatest impact on policy,” says Geoffrey Henderson, assistant professor at the University of Michigan’s School for Environment and Sustainability. “The administration’s opposition to climate policy stems from its close relationship to the fossil fuel industry. A policy affecting fashion probably won’t be a priority.”
But some experts say states are the wrong avenue to pursue industry reform. “This is the problem with piecemeal, state-by-state legislation. California is leading — sure — but if every state starts rolling out different climate mandates and conflicting mandates within individual states, brands will be navigating a legal minefield instead of focusing on real sustainability progress,” argues Rachel Kibbe, CEO of Circular Services Group, a consultancy that leads the American Circular Textiles association, which includes NGOs and major brands like H&M.
Bedát calls that objection an “industry playbook response”, adding that the bill was designed to be aligned with other requirements and that a provision allows companies to issue the same report in multiple states and the EU. “It’s like how every state has a law requiring you to wear a seat belt; but if you’re wearing one, you’ll be fine no matter which state you’re in.”
When it comes to federal pushback, Assembly member Addis says that while the administration could view the bill as a threat, the decision will ultimately be up to the state legislature. “California is the world’s fifth largest economy and our environmental protections and climate action sets the stage for what happens elsewhere,” she says, “We’d love to have federal partners, but we can also move forward and do the right thing.”
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