Most recycling systems can handle cardboard, glass, and aluminum. But cotton or nylon? When it’s already been crafted into a dress, swimsuit, or pair of jeans? That’s currently beyond what many recycling systems are set up to handle.
But recycled fabrics are coming. 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,” says California Senator Josh Newman, who authored the law.
The Responsible Textile Recovery Act of 2024 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,” says Newman.
And it’ll have implications beyond state borders. Because if H&M or another company makes more recyclable clothes, they’re not just going to make them for Californians, they’ll likely sell those garments elsewhere.
The state has until July 2028 to implement the law, and the companies have until 2030 to comply.
Now the pressure is on to figure out how.
That’s a tall order in the U.S., where about 85% of old clothes don’t get recycled. Americans throw away 92 million tons of textiles every year.
“Textiles are a contaminant in our current system,” says 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.
Clothing companies and a trade group that represents them declined to comment for this story. Newman says after a lengthy consultation process with the textile industry, there was no formal opposition to Senate Bill 707 by the end.
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, Calif., 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.
The clothes passed through a sensor programmed to identify cotton. Then the cotton clothes get shot up with a puff of air so they land on to a conveyor belt headed for the cotton bin. Photo by Caleigh Wells.
Brasch estimates that if a warehouse were full of machines like this one, the City of Los Angeles would need 10 plants just to manage commercial textile waste. It’s another piece of the logistical puzzle that clothing companies in California are now tasked with solving.