California has just taken an important step towards a functioning textile circularity system.
With CalRecycle’s selection of Landbell USA as the Producer Responsibility Organization (PRO) under SB 707, the state is moving from policy design to practical implementation. The PRO, the country’s first end-of-life policy for textiles, will shape what gets funded, which systems can scale, and how California responds to the growing challenge of textile waste.
Reuse is still the most immediate and effective way to reduce textile waste. It sits at the top of the waste hierarchy for a reason. Keeping textiles in use longer delivers greater environmental benefits than producing new clothing, and it outperforms end-of-life options that are not yet commercially viable at scale.
Related Stories
However, without collection, sorting, grading, logistics, and end markets that can absorb what we collect, reuse won’t work. If California wants SB 707 to serve as the model for the rest of the U.S., a robust collection infrastructure must be central to that strategy.
There is a growing tendency to frame global secondhand flows as a failure of domestic circularity. The public certainly should know more about where textiles go and what happens to them after they are dropped into a collection bin. But domestic circular ambitions and the global used clothing trade are not a contradiction. They are parts of the same system.
The operational reality is that U.S. domestic demand cannot absorb the growing volume of donated textiles. Only about 30 percent of clothing donated to thrift shops in the U.S. sells locally. The remainder has to go somewhere, and a significant share is exported to regions with stronger demand for secondhand items, including Central America and Africa, where the trade supports local economies and helps communities access affordable clothing. Those markets keep textiles in use and prevent them from being landfilled or incinerated. We see this even in mature EPR systems. In our recent California EPR Study, we looked at France and saw how export markets still play a major role in maximizing reuse even after decades of EPR.
We also need to recognize that declining quality is reshaping the economics of collection. Quality is what sustains the system. Durable, high-quality items extend their useful life and deliver the biggest life-cycle environmental benefit. They also generate the resale value that helps cover collection, transport, sorting, and grading. That value allows collectors to keep collecting the lower-grade fraction that can still be recovered for wiping rags, stuffing, and other secondary uses.
As the share of low-quality, low-value material increases, collectors feel the strain first: higher sorting costs, higher contamination risk, and lower resale value. We have seen this dynamic in Europe, where a similar squeeze has contributed to severe financial stress across the collection and sorting middle of the circular economy. Soex in Germany entered insolvency proceedings. Le Relais in France temporarily suspended collections in mid-2025.
This is where EPR has to be more than a funding mechanism. It must send a clear signal across the textile value chain, from design through to production. We need an upstream shift to improve the durability, reusability, and repairability of textiles placed on the market, and a real strategy to develop markets for the fraction that is not reusable.
Transparency is also key, and it is rising on the public agenda. Public scrutiny around textile destinations is intensifying, and that scrutiny can be constructive. But the debate has to start from the right diagnosis. We have a global textile waste problem driven by overproduction and overconsumption. This is not confined to the Global South, nor is it caused by reuse. In the U.S., about 85 percent of textiles are still discarded. There is also a significant problem with unsold and returned new goods being disposed of in landfills. Roughly 5 billion pounds of customer returns are landfilled annually in the U.S., yet scrutiny often focuses more on reuse than on the upstream drivers of waste.
Transparency across the sector can help clear up misinformation and strengthen trust. That means clear grading definitions, meaningful reporting, chain-of-custody documentation, and audits of downstream partners. It also means being honest about system limits. Reuse is the only commercially viable, scalable end-of-life solution for most textiles because fiber-to-fiber recycling is not currently available at scale. Evidence-based policy must prioritize reuse and durability now, while using EPR funding to accelerate technology, product, and market development for the non-reusable fraction.
The other essential reform is alignment across levels of government. State policy can set direction, but local regulation often determines whether collection infrastructure can exist at all. If local rules restrict siting, impose inconsistent permitting burdens, or treat collection as a nuisance to be pushed out of view, the network cannot scale reliably. By 2030, the goal should be a system where local ordinances support state circularity objectives, funding reflects the real cost of recovery, and reuse is prioritized. Otherwise, we will continue debating circularity while textiles continue to go to landfill.
Mattias Wallander is CEO of USAgain, a textile reuse company operating in 13 states. He is passionate about increasing knowledge and understanding of the crucial choices that our generation, the Change Generation, must make for life to prevail on a livable planet. USAgain commissioned the California Textiles EPR Study, researched and published in March 2026 in collaboration with Cascadia Consulting.
