California Is Much Crazier Than You Thought
Chris Bray
If you make or sell any kind of textile product in California, this is what you face today: Your as-yet-undetermined future costs will ‘shift to an eco-modulated model,’ actual numbers not yet known.
Throwing away an old pair of socks is a matter of the greatest imaginable complexity. It requires an extensive state plan, supervised by a nongovernmental organization that imposes mandatory payment obligations on the company that made the socks. The socks have to be safely discarded, and that requires extensive planning by a public-private partnership.
Following the passage of SB 707, the Responsible Textile Recovery Act of 2024, every significant manufacturer of textile products that sells its products in California (even if the manufacturer doesn’t make anything there) has in theory been forced to join a “producer responsibility organization” (PRO) that will develop a textile recycling plan. Penalties for intentional noncompliance will run $50,000 per day “if the violation is intentional or knowing,” and a misstatement to state regulators regarding textile recycling will be regarded as perjury, a felony. Read the bill: Its intent is to minimize the “environmental justice impacts” of your discarded socks.
The Responsible Textile Recovery Act of 2024 was authored by former state Sen. Josh Newman, who now teaches as an unpaid senior fellow in the School of Social Ecology at UC Irvine.
A whole compliance industry is springing up around the new law, starting with the requirement that every company that sells textiles in California join the PRO by July 1 of this year. Producers with “aggregate global turnover” of less than $1 million are exempt from compliance. In a complex chain of legal compliance, participation in the PRO may also fall upon wholesalers, retailers, distributors, and importers.
If you pay attention to California politics, you already knew that an NGO was going to be involved. The state has chosen a single NGO, Landbell USA, to be the designated statewide PRO. Landbell USA became a nonprofit in February of this year, but is part of an international organization that already serves as a PRO in other countries: Landbell Canada, Landbell Deutschland, and so on.
The final cost of compliance is still up in the air, but you can read the compliance “roadmap” at the Landbell website: “For the 2026–2027 cycle, registration requires a flat annual fee of $1,000. These funds support the development of the producer portal and the Statewide Needs Assessment. In the future (targeted for 2030), fees will shift to an eco-modulated model, where products designed for durability and recycling will receive reduced rates.”
So if you make or sell any kind of textile product in California, this is what you face today: Your as-yet-undetermined future costs will “shift to an eco-modulated model,” actual numbers not yet known.