FOR (REALLY) MOVING THE NEEDLE
through a mountainous, burning landfill site outside of Accra, Ghana, as it belched toxic fumes. It was 2019, and. Published last summer, follows a pair of jeans from the farms where their cotton is grown to the global factories where they’re made, and finally, to their disposal, showcasing how the apparel industry is reshaping the world. Bédat, who also founded the New Standard Institute, dedicated to reforming the fashion industry, worked in February with New York state lawmakers to introduce the Fashion Sustainability and Social Accountability Act (or Fashion Act), which would compel footwear and apparel companies with more than $100 million in revenues to map at least half of their supply chains and disclose where their biggest social and environmental impacts are—and reduce their emissions to be in line with the Paris Agreement. If passed next year, the act would make New York a leader in the effort toward accountability. Lawmakers from other states have since reached out to NSI. “We have been trained to see ourselves as consumers,” Bédat notes. “But we are citizens. We are the ones who can change the laws.”
