Members of Congress Launch Slow Fashion Caucus, Highlighting Circularity
Three members of Congress want national legislators to tighten the seams on fast fashion.
Chellie Pingree (D-Maine); Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-Washington) and Sydney Kamlager-Dove (D-California) announced Thursday they had banded together to form the Slow Fashion Caucus, which aims to create policies that will help the federal government foster circularity, in turn reducing textile waste and bettering conditions for garment workers.
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Some of those objectives include bulking up infrastructure for textile recycling and reuse; bringing some textile production back into the U.S.; creating policies that would mandate apparel industry players to decrease their resource consumption and more.
“As lawmakers, we can create incentives for the apparel industry and consumers to reduce natural resource consumption and engage in reusing, repairing, rewearing and recycling textiles,” Pingree said at a Thursday press conference.
She noted that potential legislation could draw inspiration from policies like the EU’s Extended Producer Responsibility Act (EPR), which ensures brands commandeer responsibility for the full lifecycle of the products they make and sell.
In June 2023, Pingree and Rosa DeLauro (D-Connecticut) requested that the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) put together a report detailing how lawmakers, in tandem with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), can tackle the challenge of textile waste in a better way. On Thursday, Pingree said she is still awaiting the results of that report, but she expects that the Slow Fashion Caucus will act on its findings.
Other countries, like France and Australia, have begun consideration around imposing fast-fashion taxes—whether on companies or consumers—to discourage unsustainable practices.
The U.S. lacks formalized legislation on fast fashion, though the launch of the caucus comes just a few months after the introduction of the Americas Act, which would set aside $14 billion for circularity-related initiatives and provide tax benefits to companies with reuse and recycling practices for textiles.
Other laws, like the Fashioning Accountability and Building Real Institutional Change (FABRIC) Act, which champions fair workers’ conditions, have been circulating in Congress for several years.
Some states, like New York, have introduced legislation like the Fashion Act, aimed at standardizing environmental and social requirements for the industry, have also proposed their own legislation.
The caucus is not Congress’ first slash at fast-fashion companies like Shein, Pretty Little Thing and Primark, though the brunt of the existing finger-pointing has headed toward Shein and its rival, Temu—and some of the backlash comes from an anti-China business sentiment in Congress.
Marco Rubio (R-Florida) has been vocal about his disdain for Shein, among other companies, and its use of the de minimis provision, which allows companies to ship packages valued at less than $800 into the U.S. free of taxes. Still, the de minimis rule stays in place, allowing low-value fashion packages to enter the country without much trouble.
A host of nonprofits, industry groups and companies—including American Apparel and Footwear Association (AAFA), Patagonia, ThredUp, American Circular Textiles and Accelerating Circularity—have put their support behind the new caucus.
Rebecca Goodstein, a senior retail environmental activism manager at Patagonia, said the government needs to help regulate the fashion and apparel industries where sustainability and social considerations are concerned.
“Customers should demand—and companies should deliver—products that are more durable, multifunctional and crucially, socially and environmentally responsible. Clothing designers should create products meant to be repaired and then recycled, not just replaced. Government, too, has a role. We need a national revolution around quality backed by policies and legislation that prioritize the most sustainable raw materials and best manufacturing practices,” Goodstein said.
Daisy Gonzalez, campaigns director at the Garment Worker Center (GWC), which works to organize low-wage garment workers in Los Angeles for fair treatment and better wages, said fast fashion’s negative effects extend far beyond environmental ramifications. To GWC, fast fashion also represents a system that has, for decades, mistreated workers, both domestically and internationally.
She said the Slow Fashion Caucus could be a step toward better conditions for garment workers who are paid low piece rates for the apparel they cut and sew.
“The launch of the Slow Fashion Caucus is a welcome and bold step towards change. Behind the glitz and glam of fashion is one of the world’s dirtiest industries. Fast-fashion trends dominate based on cheaply made, mass-produced clothing, driving demand and overconsumption…and to make garments so cheaply at these mass volumes, garment workers are paid poverty wages in deplorable sweatshop conditions. This has been a shameful business model for decades. The slow fashion movement demands another way and proclaims that our planet and the people who make our clothes deserve better,” she said.
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