Enforceable design standards should be established in the US for durability, reuse, repair, disassembly, and recyclability, a white paper released by the American Circular Textiles (ACT) group has urged. It has also called for terms and definitions to be standardised.
- The document sets forth the gaps in circular fashion domestically and proposing policy solutions, and also identifies strategic bipartisan public policy objectives that support ACT’s vision for the US circular fashion economy.
- The white paper is titled The United States' Opportunity for Circular Fashion: A Public Policy Case for Innovation, Jobs, Supply Chain Protection, and Consumer and Economic Empowerment.
The Group: Founded in 2022 by Circular Services Group, the American Circular Textiles (ACT) is a coalition of fashion organisations aligned on responsible domestic circularity and sustainable fashion public policy, with an emphasis on apparel and footwear reuse and recycling.
- ACT’S whitepaper announcement comes on the heels of welcoming three new members into the coalition including H&M, Reformation and Debrand, joining existing members: Rent The Runway, The RealReal, thredUP, Arrive, Fashionphile, Recurate, Supercircle and Thrilling.
Need for Standardisation: The paper mentions:
- The terms “recyclable”, “recycled”, and “recycling” are subjective and unproductive in the fashion context without standardised terminology.
- Standardisation should extend to product labelling, digital or otherwise, on new products, with the aim of better informing consumers of care, origins, and material contents of new items.
- This will in turn facilitate resale, repair, and recycling by consumers and businesses.
Taking the Trade Route: The white paper also believes that increased disclosure through better new product labelling will also improve traceability within reverse and export supply chains, which will aid compliance with import requirements (e.g., the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act) and reduce burdening other economies with our waste.
- Trade enforcement, regulatory actions and oversight are important tools for limiting the availability of environmentally questionable, high volume, low-quality fashion on the market and ensuring responsible handling of end-of-life textiles.
- These could take the form of limiting the destruction of unsold and returned inventory, increased transparency around the final destination of unsold and returned inventory, reigning in tax loopholes that allow for the import of low-value clothing while avoiding import fees, oversight of total import volumes and/or quality of clothing imports, and overseeing the export of low-value used fashion through either export limitations or increased transparency.
Call for Action: The white paper urged:
- Consumers to call on policy makers and brands to support circularity;
- Policymakers to take heed and work to drive legislation that supports the circular fashion industry;
- Brands to engage leadership and consumer bases to support a shift towards circular business models, with the help of a supportive policy framework; and
- Philanthropic and trade organisations and other relevant stakeholders, to connect with ACT.
What They Said:
We are introducing policymakers to the complexity of problems in the fashion industry and show how public policy solutions align with their goals to support US jobs, consumers and supply chains. This paper is the first of its kind; right now there are no other publications that define the state of the domestic circular fashion economy in the context of public policy. We are filling that void and hoping to launch a discussion about solutions.
— Rachel Kibbe
Executive Director / Founder
ACT / Circular Services Group
