What Goes Around Should Come Around: Extended Producer Responsibility for Textiles

May 2024
Citation:
54
ELR 10376
Issue
5
Author
Carolyn Kennedy

As marketers across the fashion industry increasingly tout “circularity” initiatives, the reality remains that exponentially more clothes are being produced, purchased, and promptly thrown away than ever before. This Comment focuses on governmental responses to the environmental crisis created by textile waste that promote circularity in the fashion industry through extended producer responsibility (EPR) regulation of textiles. It provides a brief overview of EPR as a policy approach more broadly, and examines how EPR laws have been previously implemented in other sectors at the state level as well as outside of the United States; evaluates two recently proposed state senate bills (California’s Responsible Textile Recovery Act of 2023 and New York State Senate Bill (S.B.) 6654/Assembly Bill (A.B.) 8078), and concludes with recommendations for policymakers and other stakeholders, including fashion brands, to promote a more circular economy moving forward.

Carolyn Kennedy is a 2024 J.D. candidate at the Georgetown University Law Center.

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