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

environment.ec.europa.eu

211–220 of 894 posts

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

#211

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 m…

>Here, we don't have winter, fall or anything anymore.

It's like this in a lot of places now. We're seeing climate change in the interval of a generation. It's absolutely scary.

> 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.

What country do you live in if you don't mind telling us?

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

#212
post #118

Earlier 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…

> 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 r…

>and sends them for recycling.

>If the recycler sells them on ebay as 'never worn ExampleCo jeans' then

the recycler will have undoubtedly violated a contract they have with ExampleCo and will lose in civil court and pay significant penalties greater than the money they made selling never worn ExampleCo jeans and also, undoubtedly, suffer from not having ExampleCo as a customer for their services in the future.

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

#213

Can 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?

yep, they do https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2021/11/8/chiles-desert-du...

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

#214

Their plan for what to do instead is an indifferent shrug: "Instead of discarding stock, companies are encouraged to manage their stock more effectively, handle returns, and explore alternatives such as resale, remanufacturing, donations, or reuse."

Laissez faire. They’re making businesses absorb the externalities, as they should.

Don't be surprised if products are sent abroad for destr^Wrecycling.

No I am not joking, some german company hid an airtag in a old computer that went to recycling. It ended up somewhere in Thailand, being not very environmentally friendly taken care of.

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

#215
If you look at the backyards (so called garden) of homes of the advanced countries, from satellite maps, they mostly became junkyards of things. Inside homes are full of things that are rarely used. I have seen Amazon boxes going into bins unopened. Basically, homes are overflowing with goods, and throwing things away is going to become expensive. Advances in manufacturing, supply chains and online shopping have accelerated the saturation of markets.

Destruction of goods can't be stooped due the pace of inflow of inventory. This is like a conveyor belt jamming, where the downstream belts are draining slower than upstream ones.

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

#217

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.

Luxury brands do in fact intentionally destroy old stock to make sure their value doesn't drop due to excess supply. I suppose the next step is making everything extremely limited like hypercars?

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

#218

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 m…

It would not be a good idea because the goal of companies are not to get you to consume only what you need, they want you to consume more.

You should check out "Ascension" (it is on Paramount unfortunately). It gives a pretty close up look at China and factory culture and how their entire country is mobilized to push maximum consumption. The corporation's don't view Americans high per-capita consumption as a problem but instead wonder how to drive the rest of the world to consume the same absurd amount. It gives you a sort of fly on the wall view of the whole thing and it really makes you question what kind of psychotic road we are barreling down.

I agree with you about food though. I care about food and healthcare, very occasionally transportation. Can we focus on those instead of all the bullshit "amenities" corporations are churning out, are we really gonna decimate the planet for clothes, cosmetics and plastic conveniences?

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

#219

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 m…

Essentially: unsold clothing is worth less than zero and recycling most clothing creates more emissions than it saves. So the law is forcing headache for nothing.

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

#220

Fashion production is responsible for 8-10% of all carbon emissions https://www.ifc.org/en/insights-reports/2023/strengthening-s...

And in pre-industrial societies, peasants (almost entirely women, ranging from children to the elderly) commonly spent around 100 hours of labor to produce a single square yard of fabric to clothe their families (fabric was too expensive for peasants to buy, so most spun it at home). So yeah, considering how necessary fabric is to human life, that isn't a terribly surprising figure. Citation for the 100-ish hours: ht…

There has to be a sweet spot between someone hand spinning wool for 100s of hours and an automated factory spitting 80% polymer based clothing directly into a trash can.
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