According to an article in the San Jose Mercury News (subscription required), “On [September 28], Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill into law that requires companies that make clothing, footwear and textiles, including drapes, towels and bedding, to set up the nation’s first mandatory take-back program for unwanted clothes.”

While this law won’t go into effect until 2026, it is a first-in-the-nation attempt to take drastic steps to reduce the amount of textile waste ending up in landfills in California and other places around the globe. The article notes, “Some [unwanted clothes] are donated to thrift stores, but when thrift stores can’t resell them, they often re-sell the aging garments to other companies that ship them in bulk to developing nations, such as Ghana and Chile, where they are piled in mountains as high as 50 feet in deserts and along rivers, creating massive garbage problems.”

Not only will the law require these companies to take back and recycle textile-based products, but they need to do it for free. “Under the new law, companies that make clothing and other textiles sold in California will be required to create a new non-profit organization by 2026 that would set up hundreds of collection sites at thrift stores, begin mail-back programs, and take other steps in all of California’s 58 counties to take back and recycle their products by 2030.” And 2030 is not that far off…so the non-profit would need to be set up by 2026, but it appears that the take-back efforts won’t be mandated until 2030. This will be a massive effort in the largest economy in the United States. (If California were a nation, it would rank in terms of nominal GDP as the world's fifth largest economy, behind Japan and ahead of India.)