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September 23, 2025
Welcome to Season 10 of The Climate Conversation! Daniel and Alison recorded today’s episode from Capitol Hill with Representative Sydney Kamlager-Dove of California’s 37th Congressional District, part of Los Angeles County. Rep. Kamlager-Dove spoke about her work promoting a circular economy through the Slow Fashion Caucus, which she co-chairs, and the bipartisan Recommerce Caucus.
Show notes:
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With all the depressing climate news out there, it’s sometimes hard to see progress. The Climate Conversation cuts through the noise and presents you with relevant climate change solutions happening on the Hill and in communities around the United States.
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Whether you want to learn more about the solutions to climate change, are an expert in environmental issues, or are a policy professional, this podcast is for you.
Episode Transcript:
Daniel Bresette: Hello everyone, and welcome to Season 10 of The Climate Conversation podcast. I'm Dan Bressette. I'm the president of the Environmental and Energy Study Institute, and I'm joined, as always, by my co-host Alison Davis. Alison, we're here today with our third-ever interview of a member of Congress.
Alison Davis: Yes, I have been so much looking forward to this, not just because it's the start of the season, but we're starting the season with Representative Sydney Kamlager-Dove of California's 37th congressional district in Los Angeles County. Our conversation today will focus on some of her recent caucus work. Caucuses are relatively informal groups compared to committees with more variety in terms of their size and the level of influence that they carry, but they are an indispensable piece of the legislative puzzle. Representative Kamlager-Dove helped launch the Slow Fashion Caucus and the bipartisan Recommerce Caucus, both of which promote a circular economy focused on sustainability over growth. So without further ado, let's jump right into the representative's interview.
Dan: We are super pleased to be here in the office of Representative Sydney Kamlager-Dove. Representative Kamlager-Dove represents the 37th district of the great state of California, and she's a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, where she serves as the ranking member of the subcommittee on South and Central Asia and the House Committee on the Judiciary. She has several leadership roles here in Congress, including among congressional caucuses, including, but not limited to, whip of the Black Caucus, co-chair of the Brazil Caucus, policy co-chair of the Democratic Women's Caucus, and founding member of the Slow Fashion, Recommerce, and Renters Caucuses. Before arriving in Congress, Representative Kamlager-Dove spent her career advocating for communities and families by advancing job creation and public arts programs with Rebuild LA and the Los Angeles Festival. In addition to her advocacy work, she brings to Congress nearly a decade of experience in local office in the state legislature. In 2013, she was appointed to the LA County Commission on Children and Families, and in 2015, she was elected to the LA Community College Board. She successfully ran for California State Assembly in 2018 and the California State Senate in 2021. She lives in her district with her husband, stepchildren, and rescue cat. And may I ask, what's the name of the rescue cat?
Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove: Sable. We call her baby Sable. And all of the pets that have been in our home have been rescue animals.
Dan: Very nice. Is Sable sable-colored?
Rep. Kamlager-Dove: Sable is a gray tabby, so not black, but she's definitely a baby diva.
Dan: Great. Well, Alison and I are big cat people, so whenever we can figure out a way to get a cat into our content, we do our best.
Rep. Kamlager-Dove: Cats like textiles.
Dan: I went upstairs the other day in our house, and one of ours was in the laundry basket, and I was like, Oh, that's not good.
Alison: The clean laundry, right?
Dan: Yeah, of course. Well, thank you so much for allowing Alison and me to chat with you today. I know it's a busy day here, the House is debating the National Defense Authorization Act, and other business is going on, but we're here to talk about a very cool topic, and something that I think our audience will really enjoy. But to start with, I'd like to ask in your intro, I mentioned a bunch of caucuses that you're a part of. How do you view the role of congressional caucuses? I know every member treats them a little bit differently, and I'm specifically curious, how does relationship building fit into your approach to working with your colleagues in different caucuses?
Rep. Kamlager-Dove: So I feel like when we come to Congress, you know, we're on a team, a red team or a blue team, and you're always fighting. Caucuses are an opportunity to create some intermissions in those fights, and relationships can be very important. You know, it's also a way for us to increase visibility on a topic or a particular issue, and it helps us find common ground. It is very hard, although it happens to go hard in the paint with someone in the opposite party if they also happen to be in a caucus that you're in, and you're working together to find some commonalities on an issue. So relationships are important, I guess, wherever you are, right in your own family, at your own dinner table, and yes, even in Congress.
Dan: I mentioned in the intro that you have some experience in LA with Rebuild LA and the Los Angeles Festival. And I'm curious how your Los Angeles roots, with your work with the creative arts in particular, have influenced your relationship to fashion. Now that you're here in Congress representing the 37th district.
Rep. Kamlager-Dove: So the creative economy in California is a multi-billion-dollar industry. It is incredibly important, coming from Los Angeles, that I am leaning into this space. We have manufacturing apparel, and we're making music. We're making movies and television. We're pushing the envelope when it comes to new, innovative technologies. We have amazing schools that help train young folks to move into these fields. And we're creating jobs, jobs, jobs all the time. So I think it would be a dereliction of duties to come to Congress and not uplift the importance of the creative economy and all of the industries in it. And I guess I should also talk about, you know, the creative arts coming from an artistic family, so theater and the visual arts and dramatic arts are also incredibly important.
Alison: You were just talking about creativity. Fashion is an incredibly human endeavor, from the creativity of designing clothes to the end result of wearing them, but the people in the middle, oftentimes, the people who are actually making the clothes, get left behind. So, could you tell us about how labor protections fit into the goals of the Slow Fashion Caucus?
Rep. Kamlager-Dove: Absolutely, I, you know, I'm a founding member of the slow caucus, but I'm also a member of the Labor Caucus, you know, California. It is a union state, let's say, and Los Angeles certainly is a Union City. One of the things I've done since I've been in Congress is introduce the Fabric Act, because we know that so many garment workers are mistreated, and fighting for their protections is incredibly important. You know, we've seen lawsuits and other things pop up in the city where garment workers have been abused, and I think that's just untenable and unconscionable. My hope is that we can thread the needle and talk about, you know, sustainable fashion, circular economy, and the protection of workers. It's certainly something that we talk about when we're looking at what other countries are doing, and so we should be shining the mirror on ourselves as well. So incredibly important. And we cannot forget that there's wage theft that happens, there's discriminatory practices that happen, there's unsafe working conditions, and those should be uplifted. I, in fact, earlier today, had a meeting with some folks who are creating apparel in Los Angeles, and they're very happy that the signage is going to say made in LA. They talked about how costs have gone up because of the tariffs, but they also talked about why it was so important to make these items in Los Angeles and to pay workers fair wages, to have union workers, and to support the product protections that come with it. So we need to be talking about that and then also finding ways to incentivize other companies to do the same.
Alison: And in addition to the slow fashion caucus, you also launched the bipartisan Recommerce Caucus with Representative Nicole Malliotakis of New York just this summer. What will be the priorities of this new initiative?
Rep. Kamlager-Dove: Well, happy to say that I'm wearing a birthday gift that was given to me by a friend of mine. This is a recommerce product, because who can afford the original I was so excited to be able to start this caucus, mostly because, as a young person, you know, my mom didn't have any money, and all of the clothes came from the goodwill, from thrift stores, and she'd come home and it was like slightly used, or maybe she found something that was new and a nice brand at a price point that she could afford as a single mom, and I've never stopped, you know, purchasing recommerce, because when I was young, fresh out of college, I also didn't have any money, and now, with costs going up, it is hard, and also, why be addicted to the fast fashion. So that was the reason why I wanted to start Recommerce. And the priorities are, you know, having a round table with resellers. Many resellers are women, but there are also a lot of men. We know that this is an industry that is generating, it will generate $1 trillion by 2035, so that's not pennies. That is a lot of money. So as a result, we should be creating visibility for this industry by starting a caucus and prioritizing what issues resellers are dealing with, so that we're listening to practitioners rather than dreaming up stuff on our own. But how can we offer tax incentives, you know, for folks that are interested in participating in the circular economy? How can we get rid of sales tax for recommerce items, you know? How can we be supportive of, you know, resellers that either do or don't have brick and mortar? I think there are a lot of ways that the government can show its appreciation for a growing industry.
Alison: My next question for you is a bit of a two-parter. You just mentioned the circular economy, so that's perfect. The Slow Fashion Caucus and the Recommerce Caucus share a commitment to uplifting principles of the circular economy. What do you see as the biggest obstacles to developing Circular Economy policies in the United States? And because fashion is really a global industry, are there international obstacles that affect us domestically?
Rep. Kamlager-Dove: You know? So when I was in the state legislature, I worked on legislation about how we could reuse, support the reusing of textiles and glass. And what I learned was that for many states like California that have a recycling program, it's really for things like aluminum cans, you know, and some glass bottles. But it's about recycling, not reuse. And so, how do you support the capacity building? The infrastructure of reuse is incredibly important and expensive, and I don't think we have widened the aperture when we were talking about recycling to also include reuse. I also learned that we. Need to do a better job of incentivizing larger companies that are interested in reuse. It's probably tangential to their mission. But if they're not making a ton of money and don't feel that push right from their, you know, customer base, they're not going to do it. So how can we incentivize those who are closer along, you know, to supporting it than others, to jump in the deep water and show other companies how it's done? We have to do a better job of supporting it. And I've met with some companies that are based in California that have expressed interest. The second part of your question is that there are many companies that are in other countries and are working to do good and do right, creating sustainable clothing and also supporting, in some instances, women who are, you know, marginalized or under attack, by giving them jobs and maybe supporting sustainable energy development as well. So I think we have to figure out a way to support multiple things at the same time, recognizing they're all serving a larger good. But we recognize that fast fashion impacts so many developing countries. I mean, you can see landfills of waste apparel from the desert, you know, and there's a desert in Chile. Why is it that you see boatloads of apparel that we're not using anywhere, being shipped to countries in Africa where they're burning it, creating toxins for the folks that are living there? So we do have an obligation, since fashion is a global industry, to offer some global accountability so that we're supporting and sustaining economies, jobs, and Mother Earth.
Dan: I'm really glad you made the point about reuse. We've done some briefings around the circular economy and recycling, and there was a panelist. I don't remember who it was, but they made a great point. And the idea was, if you're only recycling, you've already given up two opportunities to reduce waste, reduce, and reuse. And recycling is kind of like the last resort of how to make the most out of, you know, that opportunity. Everybody loves the deal. And I think there is kind of a fun thing about going to thrift stores and, you know, trying to track down that great deal. So at the launch event of the Slow Fashion caucus, you talked about how sustainable fashion hasn't gained much momentum at the federal level, but you've just mentioned a couple incentives or a couple policies that could maybe accelerate progress on this front and I, in addition to reuse, you mentioned tax incentives, but also encouraging the use of more sustainable fibers, including those that are grown here. Why is it important for federal policy makers, for your colleagues here in Congress, to pay attention to this issue and focus more on the fashion industry in a positive way?
Rep. Kamlager-Dove: Well, the fashion industry is a 2.5 trillion with a T dollar industry that is a lot of money. So I would think, regardless of whether you're a fashionista or not, you would be interested. We are dealing with the implications and consequences of these temper tariffs that are impacting American businesses that are working with other countries, because maybe they have facilities there, or they're getting, you know, parts or textiles from those countries, and that's impacting American jobs. That's another reason why folks in Congress should care. And I would be remiss if I didn't share that. It's also about the American brand. When I was at that caucus launch event, I was talking to a reseller, and she said, I get so many folks that are customers of mine, that are buying, they want Levi jeans, they want Americana, and they're in other countries. And what I'm realizing is that when I am selling them this product, this apparel, I'm also sharing with them a little bit of Americana, the brand, the culture of America. And believe it or not, it is a small act of diplomacy. So if you care about our economy, if you care about jobs, if you care about supporting the culture of America, you should be participating in this caucus and giving it the kind of visibility and attention that all of those issues deserve.
Dan: I remember stories from like, you know, the end of the Cold War era where, you know, people in the Soviet bloc, they just coveted Levi's jeans. They wanted that little slice of comfort, durability, but also just that, you know, that brand, that image of what it was like to live here. I mean,
Rep. Kamlager-Dove: Just think about sneaker heads. Everybody's looking for Air Jordans, right? And just think about trying when you find that great, you know, jazz vinyl, right from the era that really spoke to your parents, or that you grew up listening to. All of that is both resale, but it's. Also, the culture that we want to support, because it's tangible and it's also quite emotional.
Dan: So I am by no means a fashionista, so this might be a little bit of an awkward question for me to ask, but as someone who cares about these issues and thinks about them and is yourself fashionable, and I'll leave it to you whether you want to mention names, but I'm curious if you have any thoughts about who's the best dressed in Congress, and also if you see any fashion faux pas running around through the halls here in canon or in the Capitol building, wherever that maybe, you know, maybe there's some folks that could step up their game
Rep. Kamlager-Dove: A little bit. There are a lot of people who can step up their game. I feel like waving a red flag every seven minutes. First, I have to say, thank you for even suggesting that I'm a fashionista. I love it. You've made my day. You know, Susie Lee, Stacy Plaskett, and Amelia Sykes are fashionistas in the Democratic Party. Susie Lee is from Nevada, Emilio Sykes from Ohio, and Stacey Plaskett from the Virgin Islands. They have great style. They don't dress like some stuffy, stodgy Congress person, and you can see their personality and what they wear. And I love watching them and waiting for them to show up the next day. I think it's so important that people embrace their personality and see fashion as an extension of their personality. So I look for that. I would encourage my colleagues to find good tailors, because, you know, you buy something at a vintage store and you want it to work, and then you put it on and it's a little bit, but you can always take it to the tailor and make it fit yourself. I would also encourage a lot of my female members to get a better bra so that all the girls are where they need to be, because it helps make the look, believe it or not. And I would encourage folks to accessorize. You know, my socks never match. Sometimes they're mixed up. I'm always trying to come up with fun jewelry and accessories, because that makes you feel good. And in Congress, oftentimes we're talking about issues that don't make you feel good. So why not put on a little something, something so that you have some extra pep in your step? So accessorize better, bra. Get a tailor.
Dan: Anything you see among your male colleagues? I always notice sleeves that are too long.
Rep. Kamlager-Dove: Yeah, I'm still looking. I'm still looking. We might have to do a part two.
Dan: Well, this has been great. That is probably a great place to leave it. Thank you so much for talking with Alison and me today. Best of luck with the caucuses, best of luck with everything else, and we will certainly be in touch. And I have to also just say thanks to your great staff for helping this, helping make this possible. Thank you so much
Rep. Kamlager-Dove: Pleasure doing this. Can't wait to do it again. Thank you, and to you and your staff as well, for addressing incredibly important issues. So I hope there are other opportunities to talk more about it.
Dan: Well, Alison, that was a ton of fun. And like you said at the outset, it's exciting to be back, not just for the kickoff of Season 10. Doesn't seem like it's been that long, but Season 10 of the podcast, and then also, what a great way to kick it off. Such a great conversation. It was so nice to meet her and to learn a little bit more about her priorities in this area. One thing that kind of jumped out to me, other than the fact that she was willing to reserve her fashion advice for her male colleagues, which was probably wise in terms of, you know, building bridges and making friends. I'm really happy that she got to the point of, you know, recycling is one thing, but reuse is another, and reusing is just as important as recycling, and both of them come after, you know, the reduce, the reducing consumption. I think that's a really important point. And you know, as our listeners who may not have heard of slow fashion before, it's not about getting dressed slowly. It's about keeping articles of clothing in use longer, making the most of them, you know, really extracting as much value from the effort, the materials, the resources, everything that goes into manufacturing a garment. I think that's just a really important set of points. And I think I mentioned in the interview, because we're recording this conclusion a little after the fact, I think I mentioned that, concept of, you know, if you're recycling, you've already missed two opportunities to generate less waste that came up, I think, in the context of building materials a couple years ago at a different briefing. And I think, you know, anytime we can kind of remind people that the circular economy is not just using and recycling. It's not just about using, it’s reusing. It's really thinking about the whole system, start to finish, for everything that we use in our daily lives, which is 1000s and 1000s of things every day, it does require a different mindset, but I was very, very happy to hear her talk about it, and I think she comes at it from such a great perspective. And you know, she is using her platform as a member of Congress to be a really great leader on something that maybe doesn't get as much leadership as some other issues that are still really important.
Alison: Yeah, she was such a pleasure to chat with, and it's really clear that Representative Kamlager-Dove is truly passionate about this work. I appreciated her emphasis on the labor aspect of sustainability and fashion. I think that, as a consumer, it can be easy to become so focused on whether the production of a garment was harmful to the environment that you forget to consider if it may have been harmful to the workers who made it. So it's really important that fairness is a part of this shift towards a slower, more sustainable fashion industry. And without giving too much away, this issue of labor protections will come up in our next episode that we've already recorded, but I don't want to say specifically what it is. Just stay tuned if you are interested in workers' rights, because you'll really like that conversation as well. I was also really interested in the representative's thoughts on American culture as an avenue of international engagement. I hadn't really thought about it that way. But you know, while she was talking about that, I remembered a friend who was visiting from another country a couple of years ago, and she was just bound and determined to return home with a pair of Crocs. So I don't know how I feel about this idea of Crocs being like a symbol of American fashion, but it definitely rang true with what Representative Kamlager-Dove was saying, and I think that she may be on to something there. If you want to learn more about EESI, work on circular economies, head to our [email protected] Also, follow us on social media at EESI online for all of our recent updates. The Climate Conversation is published as a supplement to our biweekly newsletter Climate Change Solutions. Go to eesii.org/sign, up to subscribe. Thanks for joining us, and see you next time.
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