A bill pending in the legislature of New York state stands to have a major impact on fashion companies operating in the state—with hints of what may yet arise elsewhere. The name—the Fashion Sustainability and Social Accountability Act—tells you from where the bill has come and where it is trying to go.

The bill, if signed into law in its current form, would add a new §399-mm to the state's General Business Law to require that any fashion company with more than $100 million in "annual worldwide gross receipts" disclose on its website "its environmental and social due diligence policies, processes and outcomes, including significant real or potential adverse environmental and social impacts and disclosure targets for prevention and improvement."

The effect is something like an accountability value added tax, passing disclosure and remediation along the supply chain as goods mature from "raw material to final production." A compliant company would have to address not merely the environmental impact issues implicit in the name of the bill but information on workforce wages of suppliers and the disclosing company's "approach for incentivizing supplier performance on workers' rights …"