Live data from Hacker News

EU bans the destruction of unsold apparel, clothing, accessories and footwear

environment.ec.europa.eu

201–210 of 894 posts

Re: EU bans the destruction of unsold apparel, clothing, accessories and footwear

#201
post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i would think chanel quilts would sell very well

But what do you do with unsold Chanel quilts?

Turn them into insulation! This is what happens with old denim jeans: https://www.henry.com/residential/products/insulation/denim-...

Re: EU bans the destruction of unsold apparel, clothing, accessories and footwear

#202
post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Imported secondhand clothing is sold at prices that local textile producers cannot compete with. As a result, local garment industries collapse, unable to survive against the flood of cheap imports. Hence, jobs are lost in manufacturing and design, stifling innovation and economic growth.What was intended as charity often becomes a form of economic sabotage. Isn't that another version of the Broken Window Fallacy?…

Well, it's pretty hard to generalize that to the entire globe, or universe. Imagine if an alien race started landing thousands of crates on Earth full of cars, computers, clothes, etc. Every day for 30 years the crates come, all of it's free. Several dynamics can arise: 1. The elites grab the crates and hoard them, leveraging their existing power to make sure they enrich themselves and extend their power. They sell t…

Or people do other things.

Around 1800, 95% of people worked on the farm. Today it is 2%. People do different things now.

Re: EU bans the destruction of unsold apparel, clothing, accessories and footwear

#203

Great news! I live in America and I would like it to continue to be the leading economic zone. The more Europe (and others) lag behind, the better my life will be :).

As a European, it seems absurd to me one would celebrate the short term benefits of being one of the by far most destructive (per capita) countries on earth regarding global climate (challenged only by a few oil states).

Is a temporary advantage worth destroying the planet forever?

Re: EU bans the destruction of unsold apparel, clothing, accessories and footwear

#204
I'm reading the comments and I get confused. I kinda think this is a good idea and it is not like the government is purely making it a 3rd party problem only. This might make production more complicated for a while, but nowadays it is much easier to predict demand and produce quicker in smaller batches. In the 90s you might need change a whole factory setting for every single piece of fabric but nowadays it is that most of it are produced in small sets anyway.

Can anyone clear why would it not be a good idea? My country can measured an increase of micro plastic from cloth fibers. We all know how pollution is getting worse. Here, we don't have winter, fall or anything anymore. The acid rain from the 90s destroyed most of green on adjacent cities and when it is hot it gets in unbearably hot and when it is cold it gets stupidly cold.

Food production decreased by 20% this year. I kid you not. Prices went up and most of people can't afford cow's meat anymore. Most people are living on pasta and eggs, eventually they eat pig and chicken but that's getting rare.

Re: EU bans the destruction of unsold apparel, clothing, accessories and footwear

#205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I buy mostly from liquidators, where everything is sold as-is, but that doesn't stop end users from trying to make a claim, so many manufacturers often have methods for marking items that are not covered by the warranty. For example, Ryobi brands the items with a plastic welder, leaving a tell-tale wavy mark. A robust liquidation market does a lot to prevent waste, and it reduces the cost of living for those who part…

> so many manufacturers often have methods for marking items that are not covered by the warranty With textiles this is usually a hole punch or something with the tag. With hardware we had the serial number recorded. But consumers don’t care. If they buy something from a vendor they think is selling them something as new and the vendor tells them to go the manufacturer, the customer doesn’t care that you marked it as…

[deleted]

Re: EU bans the destruction of unsold apparel, clothing, accessories and footwear

#206
Compared to the USA, is a contributing factor because things can't be put on discount sale in the EU?

In american many things are always on a discount, and there are so many channels through which this discounted merchandise is funneled. Which has to be a major way retails manage excess stock.

A lot of people don't realize that european retailers are legally disallowed from selling at a discount.

Edit to clarify: things can't be put on sale, except for a few times during the year? I guess this is not every country, although I'm not sure which and when.

Re: EU bans the destruction of unsold apparel, clothing, accessories and footwear

#207
post #118

In 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…

If I donate something on the premise that it's going to be used for some charitable cause and then it just ends up on some skuzzy listing on ebay, that would, at best, be deceitful. It's "good" insofar as the item is not being dumped in some landfill but it's not "good" insofar as it was obtained through deception.

Re: EU bans the destruction of unsold apparel, clothing, accessories and footwear

#208
Fashion is a deeply irrational market that preys on the worst of human nature. There are companies selling cotton t-shirts with a logo on them for 500 dollars. You might say ok, if people are dumb enough to buy that then that's not my problem. So now there are companies creating the environmental cost of destroying viable products just to sustain this kind of grifting.

On top of that I think that society, as a general principle, should demand more product transparency in the form of regulation. What are the actual environmental costs of a certain product? Where are the components coming from? What kind of production process did that industry adopt? All this should be clear in the description of a product.

The way things are right now the incentives are geared towards trying to industrialize and sell the worst kind of product for the highest price and offload to society as an externality the environmental and social costs of doing so.

Re: EU bans the destruction of unsold apparel, clothing, accessories and footwear

#209

Does this apply to Chinese companies too or it is just another measure that disadvantages local producers?

Local producers.

Businesses importing from non-EU countries have to shoulder the responsibility in stead of the manufacturer.

Re: EU bans the destruction of unsold apparel, clothing, accessories and footwear

#210

It’s shocking to see this legislated. As if companies are just out here wantonly destroying otherwise valuable goods that could have been easily sold at a profit instead. I guarantee this problem is far more complex and troublesome than the bureaucrats would ever understand, much less believe, yet they have no problem piling on yet another needless regulatory burden.

Companies should be free to do whatever they want, as long as they pay for all their negative externalities.

It is not OK for anyone to litter, also not companies.

One can speculate that this is an easy way to force the companies to pay for their externalities - given that production in third countries are much harder to touch for the EU.

Post reply on HN