> an estimated 4-9% of unsold textiles are destroyed before ever being worn. That is a crazy amount.
I would have guessed a much higher number, and the number possibly being as low as 4% seems like good news to me.
EU bans the destruction of unsold apparel, clothing, accessories and footwear
161–170 of 894 posts
Re: EU bans the destruction of unsold apparel, clothing, accessories and footwear
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
> had already been warrantied once and then “recycled” by our recycling service. Couldn't this be prevented by, say, sticking it on a drill press and drilling a large hole in it, and then recycling it?
This does happen: for example in Macbook repair, it is common to buy defective motherboards, in order to salvage the chips off them (which are apple-specific, hence not purchasable elsewhere). Those boards often come from China, and often have holes drilled in them, I guess exactly to prevent them from being repaired. It's a shame, because some of those boards could (and would, they are valuable enough) be fully repa…
Why do you think the ones with holes didn‘t have the same defect?
Re: EU bans the destruction of unsold apparel, clothing, accessories and footwear
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don’t think that solves the issue they want to fix. The issue is brands that are stylish destroying clothing that’s now out of style (preserving brand value). The price point is already high enough that taxing raw materials doesn’t really push the needle on price, they’ll just pass the costs on. Utilitarian brands already don’t want to destroy clothing because their customers are price sensitive. This forces the br…
i would think chanel quilts would sell very well
But what do you do with unsold Chanel quilts?
Re: EU bans the destruction of unsold apparel, clothing, accessories and footwear
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
> companies who will claim to recycle your products or donate them to good causes in other countries, but actually they’ll just end up on eBay or even in some cases being injected back in to retail channels Isn't that good though? Unless the defects make the product somehow dangerous, this means that it found its way to users who are OK with it, thus avoiding waste. And someone even made money in the process. (all as…
No, because even if they're not sold as new (which as others have commented is often not the case), they're still competing with you for sales. Someone who would have paid full price for a new one instead gets a version with a slight issue at 25% off. That's fine if you're the one selling it at a discount, but here you've lost money on the production and are now losing even more money because you've lost a sale of a…
I think the spirit of that regulation is so you as the producer see this as an incentive to better manage production so there is no need to discard/burn 10% of everything.
Re: EU bans the destruction of unsold apparel, clothing, accessories and footwear
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
Man it would really make my day if all the homeless people started walking around in Prada and Gucci. That would probably be just thing to kill off these brands for good.
Why do you want those brands to die?
Why do you want those brands to exist?
Some perspectives would say that they serve no real purpose other than performative wealth display and distribution. They appeal to everyone at fundamental psychological levels to "fit in" with a popular trend or "in group".
Their actual quality is often no better than other manufactured goods. It is their perceived quality and style that are the entire reason their brands exist.
(and... I can admit that certain "luxury brands" are definitely appealing to me personally, even if they make little "logical sense" to own - maybe not clothing so much, but... watches...)
Re: EU bans the destruction of unsold apparel, clothing, accessories and footwear
#166Seems like policy ripe with unintended side effects. At the very least, it'll likely raise prices for consumers because the companies aren't allowed to manage their inventory as efficiently as they wish. Now of course this might be a totally acceptable price to pay, I'm not necessarily arguing against it. It will just be conveniently omitted from public communications on the topic by the EU. For regulators, there nev…
Brand-name clothes is not really a commodity, and there is nothing efficient about destroying inventory (at scale, destroying small returns might be efficient). The brand name is a psychological trick that transforms commodity items into premium products, and supply control (destruction) seeks to gatekeep the brand and maintain that image. It works because the cost of the textiles is a small fraction of their retail price. It wouldn't work for example for things that cost more to produce, like electronics, which is why those are usually sold refurbished.
Supply control usually benefits the producers, despite what it may seem (destroying items). Increasing the supply lowers the relative pricing power of the vendors, and reduces the price an average consumer pays for the same item, even if the retail price for the item technically increases.
I'd say it is good in the long run. If people spent less on clothes, they'd have more to spend on other goods and services or invest in productive endeavors.
Re: EU bans the destruction of unsold apparel, clothing, accessories and footwear
#167Can they ship it outside the EU and then destroy it? What happens if truly nobody wants those clothes? Why not just put a carbon tax per weight?
Maybe they could bury the clothes and call it carbon sequestration. I assume that clothes are made of mostly hydrocarbons.
Won't fungi and bacteria eat (cellulose-based) the clothes, releasing the same amount of CO₂, only a bit slower?
Synthetic fabrics can likely be buried as a form of carbon sequestration though.
Re: EU bans the destruction of unsold apparel, clothing, accessories and footwear
#168In my experience in other physical goods industries (not textiles specifically) there is a big difference between products that are good but aren’t ever sold for some reason and products that are deemed not sellable for some reason. For example, if a custom returns a product that was opened but they claim was never used (worn in this case) you can’t sell it to someone else as a new item. With physical products these…
> companies who will claim to recycle your products or donate them to good causes in other countries, but actually they’ll just end up on eBay or even in some cases being injected back in to retail channels Isn't that good though? Unless the defects make the product somehow dangerous, this means that it found its way to users who are OK with it, thus avoiding waste. And someone even made money in the process. (all as…
> Isn't that good though?
It's good for shoppers (if they're informed), the recycler, and the environment. It's bad for the original maker.
Imagine a factory mix-up means some ExampleCo jeans are made of much lower quality materials than normal. They'll wear out much faster. But ExampleCo's quality control does its job, notices the inferior quality before they hit store shelves, and sends them for recycling.
If the recycler sells them on ebay as 'never worn ExampleCo jeans' then:
1. Some people who would have paid ExampleCo for jeans instead pay the recycler - leading to lost sales.
2. Some of the customers complain online about the bad quality, damaging ExampleCo's reputation
3. Some of the customers ask for replacements, which are provided at ExampleCo's expense.
Re: EU bans the destruction of unsold apparel, clothing, accessories and footwear
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
This kind of reply is so cliché it's tiresome. "Someone makes small step to avoid waste and environmental damage" -> "if it's not perfect it's no good at all, let the free market sort it out at t=infinity". Guess what, the free market doesn't give a shit as long as the executives make their millions.
Where even are all the people wandering around naked for lack of clothes? There's so much donated clothing already out there. And the homeless here mainly 'need clothes' because they have no way to wash their clothes. It'd be less wasteful to get them access to laundry facilities. And the developing world always gets the "PATRIOTS - Super Bowl LX Champions" gear and a ton of other cast-offs - I doubt they need more.…
Then fewer clothes will get manufactured, which is exactly the goal.
Re: EU bans the destruction of unsold apparel, clothing, accessories and footwear
#170In my experience in other physical goods industries (not textiles specifically) there is a big difference between products that are good but aren’t ever sold for some reason and products that are deemed not sellable for some reason. For example, if a custom returns a product that was opened but they claim was never used (worn in this case) you can’t sell it to someone else as a new item. With physical products these…
> aren’t ever sold for some reason and products that are deemed not sellable for some reason.
I think some brands destroy the items to create an artificial scarcity that keeps their stuff 'exclusive'.