Sharlett Mena, a Democratic member of Washington State’s House of Representatives, still recalled with great fondness her most prized possession as a child: a reversible No. 23 Michael Jordan jersey.
“I wore that thing everywhere,” she told a hearing of the House Committee on Environment and Energy on Monday, the first day of the Evergreen State’s 2025 legislative session. “Every time I went to the playground, I had it on. When I wore it, I could really, really fly. I mean, my jump shot improved, my trash talk improved. I was unstoppable, unguardable, insufferable. Clothes can make you feel that way as a kid.”
And, perhaps, even past that threshold. Fashion, Mena said, can “give you confidence, tell a story, make a statement, send a message.” Clothing and shoes have played key roles in protests and liberation movements. They have stories that begin before they reach our closets and end long after we’ve chucked them aside. That can often be a problem.
“Our favorite garment may be at the root of massive environmental harms, including high water use, runoff pollution, carbon emissions, industry waste and hazardous work environments,” she said, rattling off a string of by-now familiar statistics that painted a disquieting picture of consumption run amok. “What’s more, the average consumer doesn’t have access to information about the social, environmental and holistic costs of the clothes they buy, or even whether [they have] harmful chemicals.”
Sitting before her colleagues, Mena decided to shoot her shot again, only this time she was trying to land a bill designed to hold fashion giants making more than $100 million in global gross income accountable for the impact of what they sold in the state. A version of the rechristened—and slightly retweaked—House Bill 1107, referred to as an “act relating to environmental impacts of fashion,” was first introduced in the Senate in 2022, though it failed to drum much enthusiasm. Other permutations received committee hearings in 2023 and 2024 but didn’t progress any further.
Could the fourth time be the charm? If passed, HB 1107, colloquially known as Washington State’s Fashion Act (see: New York’s effort), would require brands, retailers and distributors to disclose to the Department of Ecology the use of any high-priority chemicals regulated under the state’s toxic consumer product regulation laws. They would have to define environmentally related terms such as “green” or “sustainable” in marketing or labeling, explain how they’re addressing unwanted excess fashion products, supply information about targets or activities relating to their environmental impact, and furnish details about any due-diligence policies, processes and outcomes involving greenhouse gas emissions, recycled content or working conditions at direct manufacturers.
Flouting of these requirements would be subject to civil penalties—not exceeding $5,000 per violation in the case of a first offense and up to $10,000 for each repeat offense—that would go into a newly created environmental and public health improvement account to “directly and verifiably” benefit “overburdened” communities identified with the help of an environmental justice council.
The Department of Ecology would have its work cut out for it, too: The bill would require the agency to assess policy options for fashion producers to reduce the environmental impacts of covered products, including best practices for extended producer responsibility (EPR) and eco-labeling requirements and the development of a public-facing platform to educate consumers about the environmental attributes of their purchases. It would have to submit recommendations to the appropriate committees of the legislature after soliciting input from stakeholders that could be affected by the changes, from corporations to vulnerable populations.
Doing all this would add to Washington State’s “impressive list of precedents” to “eliminate environmental impacts of numerous things,” said Ann Murphy, who testified on behalf of the League of Women Voters of Washington, which is in favor of HB 1107. Murphy also praised the bill’s additional requirement that companies divulge not only the contents of apparel and footwear products but also the processes involved in their manufacturing, marketing, shipping and final disposal.”
‘Significant challenges’
But business groups disagreed with the proposed demands, which they said put onerous provisions in what appeared to be a very short timeframe. They balked at the high penalties and worried that their members would be held responsible for information about materials or components that suppliers could refuse to provide.
During her testimony, Crystal Leatherman, director of local and state government affairs for the Washington Retail Association, said that HB 1107 presented “significant challenges” that could “negatively impact” Washington State businesses and consumers, including by restricting what clothing or footwear is available in the region. She spoke of the bill’s “broad requirements,” which she said put retailers on the hook for aspects of their supply chains they could not control, and appeared to chide lawmakers for not engaging with retailers as part of earlier discussions.
“A bill of this nature would be better served at the federal level,” Leatherman said. “We believe assigning a state agency to oversee global supply chains is fundamentally impractical. No single state, let alone say state agency has the resources, expertise or jurisdiction to effectively regulate international supply chains.”
Andrew Pappas, who represented the American Apparel & Footwear Association (AAFA) and member brands such as Adidas, Gap Inc., and H&M Group, likewise gave a thumbs down, saying that while regulation plays a “critical role” in furthering the industry’s efforts, it’s only if the rules “serve their purpose and are properly enforced.”
Unlike California’s climate emissions reporting legislation, which the organization endorsed, HB 1107 doesn’t meet its so-called THREADS protocol for effective policymaking, Pappas said, perhaps due to the perceived lack of business input and realistic timelines that are among the blueprint’s philosophical pillars. Bringing up AAFA’s work on SB 707, the Golden State’s textile EPR scheme that became the nation’s first last summer, he said that the group is “actively working” to support the formation of a producer responsibility organization.
“Since climate reporting, circularity and EPR are all central tenets of HB 1107, it would do all of us well to look at what we accomplished, working together, in California and take a similar approach here,” Pappas said.
The Department of Ecology’s Kimberly Goetz, standing in for the agency, provided what she said was a “neutral” stance with several areas of apprehension. Not only did the bill lack financial support from the governor’s budget, she said, but the department also had “little to no” expertise about the standards it references and how to evaluate the business practices of multinational corporations. She also recommended involving the Department of Health in any analyses that involved public health.
“When you combine that with the tight timeline that was mentioned earlier, we’re concerned that the assessments are not going to be a particularly helpful product at the end of the day,” she said. “We recommend thinking about directing this work to another agency with more expertise on business practices, or changing the assessment and recommendations requirement in the bill to instead focus solely on information collection and reporting about the industry.”
Over on X, Washington State House Republicans castigated Democrats for considering legislation that they said would make clothes and shoes more expensive “in the middle of an affordability crisis.” In contrast, they said, House Republicans were offering “solutions” that would reduce the tax burden on working families, such as making diapers and prepared foods exempt from the state sales tax.
Even so, Heather Trim, executive director of Zero Waste Washington, an environmental nonprofit, said that the bill’s requirements were “doable.” She pointed out that Nike was the world’s most valuable fashion purveyor in 2024—other rankings say it’s Louis Vuitton, but Nike comes close—and that transparency and traceability don’t appear to have cramped its style.
“I looked at Nike’s website; they have an awesome sustainability report,” Trim said. “They have almost everything that’s in Rep. Mena’s bill in their report. So they are a model and it shows that it can be done.” She mentioned how the lack of data on issues such as textile waste means they can’t be properly managed, to the “heartbreaking” detriment of countries in the global South. “I give talks about zero waste around the state a lot and after plastic and recycling, in terms of people being upset and frustrated, textiles and fast fashion are like No. 2. It is a big deal to people. This is a massive worldwide problem.”
Mena agreed. In 2018, the Environmental Protection Agency estimated that more than 11 million tons of textiles, or 85 percent of all yearly textiles, ended up in U.S. landfills. The other 15 percent, she said are Michael Jordan jerseys still hanging in closets or recycled textiles. Washington State’s session is a 105-day sojourn that ends at the close of April. It will remain to be seen if the lawmakers see the bill as a slam dunk—or a hoop dream.
“The fashion act before you today is a first step to creating a more sustainable industry and establishing resources for a more informed public in Washington,” she said. “It requires companies to be honest about the chemicals that our bodies are exposed to when we wear their clothes. It will help us assign meaning to terms such as ‘sustainable,’ to ensure that consumers can make informed decisions about where they spend their money, and it gives us data to design well-informed programs to reduce waste and pollution.”
