California's Responsible Textile Recovery Act of 2024 amended

Pursuant to a request by the International Sleep Products Association (ISPA), the amended bill continues to exclude materials managed under the Mattress Recycling Council’s (MRC) California Mattress Recycling Programme, which includes mattresses, foundations and futons.

ISPA is working with the bill’s proponents to clarify another definition in the amended bill.

If the Assembly passes the amended version of the bill, it will return to the Senate for another round of vote.

The California Integrated Waste Management Act of 1989, administered by the department of resources recycling and recovery, generally regulates the disposal, management and recycling of solid waste. The act establishes stewardship programmes for various products, including, among others, carpet.

This act requires a manufacturer of carpets sold in this state, individually or through a carpet stewardship organisation, to submit a carpet stewardship plan to the department, which is required to include specified elements, including achieving specified carpet recycling rates and a funding mechanism that provides sufficient funding to carry out the plan.

The amendment bill would make the above product stewardship for carpet programme inoperative upon the completion of specified conditions.

The bill would establish a flooring producer responsibility programme that would require producers of covered products to form and join a single product responsibility organisation (PRO) for the collection and recycling of a covered product.

It would define a ‘covered product’ to include carpet, artificial turf and resilient flooring.

The bill would require that by January 1, 2026, the department would prepare an initial statewide needs assessment, to among other things, determine the necessary steps and investment needed to achieve a resilient flooring recycling rate of 25 per cent by 2030.

Fibre2Fashion News Desk (DS)