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

• Date: 01 May 2024
• Author: Carolyn Kennedy.

COMMENT

54 ELR 10376 ENVIRONMENTAL LAW REPORTER 5-2024

WHAT GOES AROUND

SHOULD COME AROUND:

EXTENDED PRODUCER

RESPONSIBILITY FOR TEXTILES

by Carolyn Kennedy

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

As marketers across the fashion industr y increasingly

tout “circularity” initiatives,1 the reality remains

that exponentially more clothes are being produced,

purchased, and promptly thrown away than ever before.2

1. Circularity objectives are touted by dierent players, including fast-fashion

companies, luxury fashion groups, and fashion brands traditionally market-

ing to more “sustainable” consumers. See, e.g., Shein, Designing Circular Sys-

tems, https://www.sheingroup.com/our-impact/process/designing-circular-

systems/ (last visited Mar. 20, 2024) (pledging that Shein will “have a fully

circular textile supply chain by 2050”); see also, e.g., H&M Group, Circular-

ity, https://hmgroup.com/sustainability/circularity-and-climate/circularity/

(last visited Mar. 20, 2024) (proclaiming that “[a]t H&M Group, we’re

committed to shifting to a circular system”); see also, e.g., Kering, Sustain-

ability: Circularity Ambition, https://www.kering.com/en/sustainability/

innovating-for-tomorrow/circularity-ambition/ (last visited Mar. 20, 2024)

(explaining that “Kering and its Houses are developing a circular economy

approach”); see also, e.g., LVMH Highlights Its Circular Economy Initiatives

at the ChangeNOW Summit, the World’s Largest Gathering of Innovations

for the Planet, LVMH (May 25, 2022), https://www.lvmh.com/news-

documents/news/lvmh-highlights-its-circular-economy-initiatives-at-the-

changenow-summit-the-worlds-largest-gathering-of-innovations-for-the-

planet/ (reporting on LVMH’s “creative circularity solutions”); Our Endless

Commitment to Circularity, O (Apr. 16, 2020), https://www.

outerknown.com/blogs/journey/our-endless-commitment-to-circularity

(touting that “Outerknown is fully embracing circularity”); Reformation,

Circularity, https://www.thereformation.com/circularity.html (last visited

Mar. 20, 2024) (stating that “we’ve been into circularity since before it was

really a thing”).

However, some claims about “circularity” by brands may be an example

of greenwashing. See Carolyn Kennedy, “Sustainable” Fashion’s True Colors:

A Proposal for “Restyling” the FTC Green Guides, 53 ELR 10751, 10755-

56, 10766 (Sept. 2023), available at https://www.elr.info/articles/elr-arti

cles/sustainable-fashions-true-colors-proposal-restyling-ftc-green-guides;

cf. Archana Ram, Our Quest for Circularity, P (Mar. 10, 2021),

https://www.patagonia.com/stories/our-quest-for-circularity/story-96496.

html (recognizing that “circularity still doesn’t gure into most of the cloth-

ing industry—not even here at Patagonia”).

2. See, e.g., Communication From the Commission to the European Parliament,

the Council, the European Economic and Social Committee, and the Commit-

tee of the Regions: EU Strategy for Sustainable and Circular Textiles, COM

(2022) 141 nal (Mar. 30, 2022), https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/

EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A52022DC0141 (noting that “[g]lobal textiles

production almost doubled between 2000 and 2015,” that “the consump-

tion of clothing and footwear is expected to increase by 63% by 2030,”

and that “every second somewhere in the world a truckload of textiles is

landlled or incinerated”) (internal citations omitted).

e business model of “fast fash ion” in which large numbers

of garments, typical ly poor in quality, are sold at low prices

to match quickly shifting fashion trends furt her encour-

ages overproduction and overconsumption. Shein, a global

online fashion retailer primarily targeting Generation Z

and millennial c onsumers, is an example of a company that

has perfected this model. e company drops thousands of

new items on its website daily, allowing shoppers to match

the latest microtrends at an unbeatable price.3

e result of these rapid product cycles and practically

planned obsolescence is the generation of unprecedented

amounts of waste that is often not reusable or easily recy-

cled. e U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

estimated that text ile waste amounted to 17 million tons, or

34 billion pounds, in 2018.4 e main source of this textile

waste was disca rded clothing and footwear, which together

contributed an estimated 13 million tons, although textile

waste also includes furniture, carpets, sheet s, and towels.5

Unwanted clothing waste is often shipped in large qua n-

tities to other countries such as Ghana, pa rt of a broader

reality in waste exportation that has been coined “waste

colonialism.”6 Due to its low quality, much of this waste

is landlled upon arriva l.7 Depending on the materials

used, decomposition of clothing waste may take centuries

3. See Alina Selyukh, America Can’t Resist Fast Fashion. Shein, With All

Its Issues, Is Tailored for It, NPR (Oct. 13, 2023), https://www.npr.

org/2023/10/13/1204983212/shein-america-fast-fashion-legal-issues (re-

porting that “Shein drops up to 10,000 new items on its website daily”).

4. U.S. EPA, Textiles: Material-Specic Data, https://www.epa.gov/facts-and-

gures-about-materials-waste-and-recycling/textiles-material-specic-data

(last updated Nov. 22, 2023) (reporting that textile waste represented “5.8

percent of total [municipal solid waste] generation that year”).

5. See id.; see also U.S. EPA, Nondurable Goods: Product-Specic Data, https://

www.epa.gov/facts-and-gures-about-materials-waste-and-recycling/non-

durable-goods-product-specic-data (last updated Nov. 22, 2023).

6. See Sarah Kent, Should Fashion Pay for Its “Waste Colonialism”?, B. F

(Feb. 14, 2023), https://www.businessoashion.com/articles/sustainability/

fashion-pay-waste-colonialism-secondhand-clothes-epr-kantamanto/.

7. Id.; see also Textile Recycling in Germany: A Microcosm of Global Challenges,

C (Oct. 4, 2023), https://cosh.eco/en/articles/textile-recycling-germany.