§ 65630 — Government Code §§ 65100–65763 — Local Planning, General Plans, Specific Plans, Community Plans (Planning and Zoning Law, Chapter 3, excluding Articles 10.6–10.7)

(a) The Legislature finds and declares all of the following:

(1) The 2020 annual report, as published by the Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery, found that California is falling far short of the state diversion goal of 75 percent in 2020.

(2) A significant portion of the waste stream into California landfills is composed of clothing and household goods that have not reached the end of their usefulness. Discarded clothing remains the largest source of textile waste in the world, with the average United States citizen throwing away 81 pounds of clothing each year, 95 percent of which could have been reworn or repurposed. Yet, 85 percent of this material ends up in landfills. According to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, one garbage truck of textiles is landfilled or incinerated every second.

(3) California faces a growing problem in siting and approving sufficient landfill space. Landfill siting and the expansion of current landfill facilities are controversial and landfills create the potential for significant adverse environmental impacts.

(4) Discarding still-usable clothing and household goods increase greenhouse gas emissions by stimulating production of replacement goods and adding greenhouse gas emissions along the continuum of product manufacture, transportation, warehousing, and delivery.

(5) Recent years have seen an increase in consumer interest in purchasing used clothing and smaller household items from retail establishments that specialize in selling such goods, commonly referred to as “thrifting” and “thrift” retail establishments. Thrift accounted for approximately 60 percent of the total secondhand market in 2021. As of June 2022, more than one in three shoppers in the United States, and nearly one-half of Canadian shoppers, surveyed reported caring more about the environmental impact of their apparel choices today than they did three years ago.

(6) Thrift retail establishments are identical to other retail establishments in terms of local impacts on traffic, parking, and other land use topics. In addition, given that thrift establishments divert reusable goods from landfills in furtherance of important statewide policy, those establishments provide environmental benefits that nonthrift retail establishments do not.

(b) Therefore, it is the intent of the Legislature that local governments be prohibited from classifying or otherwise treating thrift retail establishments differently than nonthrift retail establishments, subject to certain limitations contained in this article.

(Added by Stats. 2024, Ch. 728, Sec. 1. (AB 2632) Effective January 1, 2025.)