US Congresswoman Chellie Pingree has introduced legislation aimed at building a coordinated federal framework to tackle the country’s fast-growing textile waste problem, marking what her office describes as the first bill of its kind.
The Textile Waste Reduction Act (TWRA) would direct the Environmental Protection Agency to develop a National Textile Circularity Strategy, conduct a needs assessment, and identify the policy, investment and implementation measures required to advance circularity across the textile sector.
The bill would also create an Interagency Working Group on Textile Circularity, backed by an advisory board, and require the EPA to publish annual data on textile waste generation as well as available federal funding opportunities for states, tribal governments and local authorities.
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Pingree, founder of the Congressional Slow Fashion Caucus, said the bill responds directly to findings from the first-ever Government Accountability Office report on fast fashion pollution, which she and Representative Rosa DeLauro requested in 2023. She said the report confirmed that textile waste is one of the fastest-growing waste streams in the country, largely driven by fast fashion, and that federal action is needed to address it.
According to Pingree’s office, millions of tonnes of textiles are discarded in the US annually, with most ending up in landfills, where materials can leach contaminants including PFAS and microplastics into soil and water. The office also noted there has been no coordinated federal strategy to address the issue, even as hundreds of thousands of fibre and textile manufacturing jobs have moved offshore over recent decades.
The Slow Fashion Caucus, launched in June 2024, counts American Circular Textiles, the Garment Worker Center, Patagonia and ThredUp among its supporters. The bill’s next step is committee review before it can advance to a House floor vote.