Jessica Matlock of Landbell USA and Paul Doertenbach of Landbell Group compare local and global notes on the implementation of textile EPR policy and explore what global alignment could look like in practice to build a more sustainable fashion industry

In Episode 346, Kestrel welcomes Jessica Matlock, the Government Relations Manager for Landbell USA, and Paul Doertenbach, the Head of the Textile Programme at Landbell Group, to the show. Jessica previously served as a Policy Analyst in the California State Senate where she staffed housing, local government and environmental legislation, most notably SB 707 (Newman), the Responsible Textile Recovery Act of 2024. At Landbell Group, Paul leads the development of textile EPR solutions across Europe and internationally. He was part of the team behind I:Collect (I:CO), helping to establish and grow the company into a global textile take-back and collection platform, and is also co-founder of reverse.fashion, a tech company developing AI-powered automated sorting solutions for textile reuse and recycling.

Landbell USA is the Producer Responsibility Organization selected by CalRecycle to implement the Responsible Textile Recovery Act of 2024 – the first-in-the-nation Extended Producer Responsibility program for clothing and textiles.

"While EPR can solve a lot of things, it is just one more piece of legislation required on our journey towards implementing the circular economy in our industry. And what I do see is a lot of times when stakeholders within the reverse supply chain or any actors actually within our industry have a problem, they close their sentence by saying, yeah, but we will have EPR covering that. And it's not gonna be EPR, we know its boundaries. We discussed the targets that are being set, and most likely it will not solve all issues that we have." -Paul

"I think the EU's waste directives are a lot more top down. Like the the government and legislation is really setting those targets. and in California it's more of a bottom up approach … California's structure very much puts a lot of those performance targets on the PRO to set in partnership with CalRecycle, and that is being done through an intentionally collaborative approach." -Jessica

THEME — POLICY AS A LEVER TO ADDRESS TEXTILE WASTE & ADVOCATE FOR A CIRCULAR ECONOMY

Building on this month's theme of USING POLICY AS A LEVER TO ADDRESS TEXTILE WASTE & ADVOCATE FOR BUILDING A CIRCULAR ECONOMY – in this episode, we're taking a look at it through the lens of a producer responsibility organization or PRO – an entity that helps regulate Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) legislation through practice.

I bring on two guests for this one – one who works with LANDBELL USA (the PRO for Cali