NYC legislation written with Collective Fashion Justice consultation becomes law!

Councilman Ben Kallos, the primary sponsor of the newly passed law.

During Climate Week 2021, a New York City Council Bill, written in consultation with Collective Fashion Justice board members Joshua Katcher and Emma Hakansson, became law.

The Bill is a Local Law in relation to agency purchasing of textiles, including required reporting on the supply chain for such textiles, and to establish a task force to recommend legislation and policy for environmentally preferable purchasing, use and disposal of such textiles.

Sponsored by councillors Ben Kallos, Inez D. Barron and James F. Gennaro, the Law passed near to unanimously, at 40:3 votes. Expert testimony from Collective Fashion Justice supported the Bill in its passing.

This Bill will require the City’s Director of Environmentally Preferable Purchasing to report details on the supply chain and source of agency-purchased textile goods. Additionally, this Bill will establish a task force to identify and assess agency needs for textile goods, and to make recommendations for purchasing such goods in an environmentally preferable manner. Finally, the task force will be required to identify other costs associated with city textile consumption, including the health and safety effects on laborers in the supply chain and the communities in which textile goods are produced, processed and manufactured.

When considering the environmental impact of textiles, the task force will need to preference the consideration of impacts on climate change, agricultural land occupation, natural land transformation, water depletion, and biodiversity. Many other environmental considerations must be made, and Collective Fashion Justice notes that these impacts of primary concern are all most relevant to the use of animal-derived materials, including leather and wool.

This Bill has an incredibly exciting chance to make significant change in the sustainability and ethics of New York city purchasing, and Collective Fashion Justice look forward to what comes next, as the task force begins their work.

Collective Fashion Justice is very grateful to the sponsoring council members, and to their teams, who worked hard on the writing of this piece of legislation.