California’s New Textile Law Goes Live July 1 — and a Small Texas Wool Maker Still Can’t Get a Straight Answer on What It Will Cost Him.
On July 1, 2026, California’s Responsible Textile Recovery Act — known in the legislature as SB 707 — requires every company that sells clothing, sheets, towels, or other textiles into the state to have enrolled with a state-approved recycling organization or face fines running as high as $50,000 a day. It is the first law of its kind in the country.
Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) signed the bill in September 2024. It applies to any business with a customer in California, regardless of where that business is based — which is how a small bison-fiber textile maker in Texas named Ron Miskin ended up telling a reporter he has “no flippin’ clue” what compliance is going to cost him.
Miskin’s company, Buffalo Wool Company, makes durable goods that are the opposite of the fast-fashion waste the law was written to target. That mismatch — a state recycling mandate built for mass-market clothing, applied without distinction to a small out-of-state maker of goods designed to last decades — is the story.
- $10,000/day — penalty for a standard SB 707 violation — up to $50,000/day for intentional or knowing violations — per the bill text
- July 1, 2026 — the producer-enrollment deadline — the go-live date the law's out-of-state compliance burden centers on
- 1 company — Landbell USA — approved Feb. 27, 2026 as California's sole statewide Producer Responsibility Organization for textiles
- 48th of 50 — California's overall rank in the Tax Foundation's 2026 State Tax Competitiveness Index
- ~288,600 — net domestic out-migration from California in 2025, per the state's own Department of Finance
SB 707, formally the Responsible Textile Recovery Act of 2024, is what policy lawyers call an Extended Producer Responsibility, or EPR, law — the same regulatory model California and a handful of other states have already applied to paint, mattresses, and packaging. The concept shifts the cost and logistics of end-of-life recycling from the consumer or the municipality onto the company that made the product in the first place. Textiles are new territory: no other state, and no other country, has passed an EPR statute for clothing and household textiles before California did. The National Law Review and JD Supra’s legal analysts both confirm the “first in the nation” distinction independently of each other.
Newsom signed the bill on September 28, 2024. Its author was then-State Sen. Josh Newman (D-CA, SD-29), a legislator with an unusual résumé of his own: he was recalled by voters once in 2018 over a gas-tax vote, then won his seat back in 2020 and served through 2024. Per the Federalist’s reporting, Newman is now an unpaid senior fellow at UC Irvine and a candidate for California Superintendent of Public Instruction. The mechanism his bill created requires every textile producer selling into California to join a state-approved Producer Responsibility Organization, or PRO, which handles collection, sorting, and recycling on the industry’s behalf. On February 27, 2026, CalRecycle approved Landbell USA as the sole statewide PRO — meaning every covered producer in the country, whatever its size, now funnels through one company’s enrollment system.
California's new textile recycling law requires clothing and textile makers to join a state-approved Producer Responsibility Organization that handles collection and recycling — the first mandate of its kind in the country.
Ron Miskin owns Buffalo Wool Company, a small Texas-based maker of textiles spun from bison fiber. It is, by design, the opposite of the throwaway clothing industry SB 707 was written to address. Miskin told the Federalist plainly what makes his product different from the fast-fashion waste stream California regulators are targeting.
“Our stuff doesn't end up in landfills. We're not high volume. Our stuff is stupidly expensive, but it works. It lasts.”
Ron Miskin · owner, Buffalo Wool Company
Miskin’s bison-fiber goods are durable, low-volume, and priced accordingly — the kind of textile that gets handed down rather than thrown out. SB 707 does not carve out an exception for that category. It applies the same PRO enrollment requirement to a small Texas artisan producer that it applies to national fast-fashion retailers shipping disposable clothing by the container-load. When the Federalist asked Miskin what he expected his compliance costs to run, his answer was blunt: “I don’t have a flippin’ clue.” That uncertainty is the practical burden this story is about — not a hypothetical cost, but the inability of a small out-of-state business to even estimate one before the law’s enforcement window opens.
SB 707’s implementation is not a single go-live date; it is a multi-year regulatory rollout that started before most producers noticed. The PRO application deadline was January 1, 2026; CalRecycle’s approval of Landbell USA followed on March 1, 2026. July 1, 2026 is the producer-enrollment deadline — the date the Federalist’s reporting centers on, and the one that determines whether a company like Buffalo Wool Company is in compliance or exposed to penalties. After that, a statewide needs-assessment is due March 1, 2027; CalRecycle’s own implementing regulations take effect July 1, 2028; the stewardship plan and fee model must be finalized by July 1, 2030; and enforceable performance standards begin March 1, 2032.
Standard violation: up to $10,000 per day.
Intentional or knowing violation: up to $50,000 per day.
Small-business exemption: producers with less than $1,000,000 in global annual turnover are exempt from the mandate entirely.
Per the Federalist’s reporting — not independently confirmed elsewhere — PRO registration for the 2026–27 cycle carries a flat $1,000 fee, layered on top of whatever a producer’s share of the PRO’s collection and recycling costs turns out to be. CalRecycle’s overall agency budget runs roughly $2 billion, per the same reporting — though that figure covers the agency’s full portfolio, not the textile program specifically.
Buffalo Wool Company’s annual revenue almost certainly falls under the $1,000,000 exemption threshold written into the bill — but per the Federalist’s account, Miskin did not appear to know that with confidence, which is itself a data point about how the law has been communicated to the small out-of-state businesses it reaches. The agency’s director, reported as Zoe Heller per published accounts, oversees the program’s rollout; we flag that name with the same sourcing caution as the fee figures above, since it was not independently confirmed against a primary CalRecycle personnel record.
SB 707 does not exist in isolation. The Tax Foundation’s 2026 State Tax Competitiveness Index ranks California 48th of 50 states overall, with state and local tax collections running about $8,942 per capita and a top combined income tax rate of 14.6% — the highest in the country. CalChamber’s Advocacy division maintains a running “Cost Drivers” list of bills like SB 707 for exactly this reason: taken individually, a textile-recycling mandate is a narrow rule; taken together with the rest of California’s regulatory and tax stack, it is one more entry on a list businesses are increasingly weighing against the cost of leaving.
California’s own Department of Finance, in its 2026 E-1 population estimate, put net domestic out-migration from the state at roughly 288,600 people in 2025 — more Californians leaving for other states than arriving from them, net, over a single year. The Daily Caller has separately catalogued a broader pattern of California regulatory mandates taking effect through 2026 under Newsom’s administration, of which SB 707 is one recent example among several.
Talked to an LA-county coffee shop owner who just sold her business. Said she'd been working for free for the last six months just trying to keep up with the paperwork and compliance costs. This is what people mean when they talk about small businesses leaving California.
That post describes a different business and a different regulatory pressure, with no direct connection to SB 707 — we include it as illustrative color on the broader small-business burden theme, not as evidence about the textile law specifically. The throughline across all of it is the same one Miskin describes: compliance costs that are real, hard to estimate in advance, and applied without much regard for whether the business in question is the kind of high-volume, disposable-goods operation the underlying policy problem was actually about.
Governor: Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) — signed SB 707 into law September 28, 2024.
Author: former State Sen. Josh Newman (D-CA, SD-29) — recalled in 2018 over a gas-tax vote, returned to office 2020–2024; per published reports now an unpaid senior fellow at UC Irvine and a candidate for California Superintendent of Public Instruction.
Implementing agency: CalRecycle, whose director is reported as Zoe Heller per published accounts (not independently confirmed via a primary source).
Sole statewide PRO: Landbell USA, approved February 27, 2026.
Miskin’s closing word to the Federalist was not really about California at all. “My number one concern,” he said, “is making sure that we keep making textiles in the US.” The Federalist’s Chris Bray followed that quote with his own assessment: California is making that goal as hard as possible. Whether that is a fair characterization of a genuinely first-in-the-nation recycling law, or an overstatement of the burden it actually imposes on a business almost certainly small enough to qualify for the law’s own exemption, is a judgment call. What is not in dispute is the law itself, its July 1 enrollment deadline, and the $10,000-to-$50,000-a-day penalty structure a small out-of-state producer now has to navigate to keep selling into the country’s largest state market.
California’s SB 707 is the first textile Extended Producer Responsibility law in the country — a genuine policy first, signed by Gov. Newsom (D-CA) and authored by former State Sen. Josh Newman (D-CA). Its July 1, 2026 enrollment deadline and $10,000-to-$50,000-a-day penalty structure apply to any producer selling into California, regardless of size or location, layered onto a state that already ranks 48th of 50 on tax competitiveness and lost roughly 288,600 residents to other states last year alone. A small Texas bison-wool maker’s honest answer about what compliance costs — “I don’t have a flippin’ clue” — is the plainest evidence of how far a well-intentioned recycling mandate can reach past the fast-fashion waste problem it was written to solve.
