Preconsumer textile waste refers to the waste generated by textile production and manufacturing processes, the quantities of which are highly undocumented and unavailable as a result of the industry’s utilization of private waste haulers. FABSCRAP, a preconsumer textile collection and recycling service, estimates the preconsumer textile waste stream to be around forty times larger than the postconsumer textile waste stream. Throughout their operations, FABSCRAP has identified fabric samples and their headers, which are the informational labels that fabric samples are affixed to, as the single largest contributor to preconsumer waste within the fashion industry. Fabric samples and headers make up 75% of the waste FABSCRAP receives from over 800 client brands. In addition to brands requesting samples during the garment design and production processes, textile mills send new samples to brands as marketing tools each season. Most of these samples are too small and lack incentive to be reused, so they end up landfilled. Variations in attachment mechanisms (i.e. stapled, sewn, glued) of the samples to their headers require different steps of disassembly, which directly impedes recycling potential. As such, there is ample opportunity for industry-level environmental impact savings in defining a low-impact design standard for fabric samples and headers that seeks to reduce waste and maximize reuse and recycling of materials and attachments. This project conducts an audit by surveying 7,987 pounds of fabric samples and headers from a striated random sample of FABSCRAP’s client base and identifies the ten most common header formats. Environmental impact analysis uncovers the raw material and end-of-life impacts of the most common headers for comparison. Raw material impacts are calculated using a streamlined Life Cycle Analysis approach with information from the IDEMAT database. End-of-life impacts are evaluated both quantitatively and qualitatively based on the percentage of header materials by weight that are landfilled, recycled and reused and the extent of disassembly required for disposal. The headers are ranked in order of magnitude based on a combined score of raw material and end-of-life impacts. A final recommended design standard is developed for use in the textile and fashion industries at large - and compared to the most common headers, illustrating the potential impact savings of adoption at the singular header level, and when scaled to the project’s sample size. The design standard is based on circular economy principles, utilizing the waste hierarchy to conclude that the lowest impact design is based on: reducing the total amount of materials by type and weight, maximizing reuse potential and ease of disassembly for attachment mechanisms, and preferring paper fiber-based header materials with high recycling recovery and efficiency rates. The wide adoption of a low-impact standard header across the textile industry could be an impetus for broader transformational change within the textile and fashion industries.