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

environment.ec.europa.eu

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

#371

Post by grayhatter »

ch4s3 wrote: post #147
grayhatter wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assume the legislation is trying to reduce a real problem. Why does that problem exist if that incentive is actually really strong in practice? I assume it's not actually a really strong incentive in context.

> Assume the legislation is trying to reduce a real problem Why assume that? Could you not imagine that legislation is often meant to signal values to voters as much or more than it is intended to solve real problems.

> Why assume that? Could you not imagine that legislation is often meant to signal values to voters as much or more than it is intended to solve real problems.

You mean something like, to signal to voters they're trying to solve a problem voters want changed? Or a problem voters say they have?

I didn't mean to imply it would fix the problem, or that the problem would be fixed. Just that there's desire for [thing targeted], is something enough people would want to change.

I also said "assume that" for the sake of the argument/discussion given you started by saying you didn't understand. I say it's trivial to understand if assume there are other incentives where destroying the product is desirable. Thus making the incentive you mentioned, not very strong, (in context).

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

#372

Post by JoshTriplett »

Der_Einzige wrote: post #288
JoshTriplett wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not always a win. There have been a few reports that sending large numbers of clothing donations to areas that don't specifically need them has the result of harming local industry that would otherwise be able to produce and sell clothes.

The appearal industry is among the most exploitive in the world. It's good to kill it before it springs up. Bangladesh is not anyone's example of a model country.

Note specifically that I said local industry. I don't mean some factory owned by a global chain.

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

#373

Post by miki123211 »

motbus3 wrote: post #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 m…

Here's how this law is actually going to work.

Instead of destroying the unsold clothes in Europe, manufacturers are going to sell them to "resale" companies in countries with little respect for the rule of law, mostly in Africa or Asia. Those companies will then destroy those clothes, reporting them as sold to consumers.

So instead of destroying those clothes in Europe, we'll just add an unnecessary shipping step to the process, producing tons of unnecessary CO2.

The disclosure paperwork and the s/contracts/bribes/ needed to do this will also serve as a nice deterrent for anybody trying to compete with H&M.

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

#374

Post by bee_rider »

linehedonist wrote: post #337
cosmic_cheese wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Here, we don't have winter, fall or anything anymore. In my inland US east coast hometown there’s been a big shift in winters. It used to be that it consistently got quite cold after late September to mid October, winters consistently came with several feet of snow, and spring hadn’t fully arrived until well into April. For the past several years winter has almost disappeared — many years there’s almost no snow and…

sure, though New York has gotten a real honest-to-goodness winter this year. There's been a foot on the snow on the ground continuously for the last month, and it's been cold enough that the pipes in one of my bathrooms froze. I think it's easier from the West Coast to bemoan the end of East Coast winters than to live through one :)

This has been a decent, classic winter. It’s an important part of the regional character. We need to have snow occasionally, remembering to shovel the sidewalks is an essential “on the ground” indication that everybody is still doing society.

Sorry about the pipes.

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

#375

Post by oblio »

tsoukase wrote: post #179

EU fixes textile waste. What about plastic waste that dwarfs any other polution with the forever chemicals? No economy dares to touch this subject seriously.

https://www.europarl.europa.eu/pdfs/news/expert/2018/12/stor...

They are working on that, too.

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

#376

Post by saubeidl »

smt88 wrote: post #275
saubeidl wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about the poor in their own countries that might not be able to afford clothes?

Any name brand would rather send their unsold clothes to a landfill in India rather than allow their wealthy customers to see poor people wearing the clothes.

Which is why you write regulations to ban that. Hence, this thread.

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

#377

Post by Mordisquitos »

peterfirefly wrote: post #343
Mordisquitos wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have an odd perception of what constitutes "micro-targetting". Why apparel specifically ? Because apparel is specifically the consumer industry where enormous quantities of unsold product are intentionally destroyed to then be replaced in the market by newly made equivalent articles. Why was USB-C mandated specifically on Apple devices? Well here's the thing: it wasn't . It was mandated on smartphones in general…

> Because apparel is specifically the consumer industry Because it is very visible to low information voters who are also red/green voters.

Are you a high-information voter? If so, could you please provide information about any consumer industry that comes even close to the apparel industry in terms of a) ubiquity and market scale and b) destruction of unsold but undamaged items while still producing equally functional equivalents for market?

Is there such a thing as fast-cutlery? Or fast-furniture? Maybe fast-book or fast-vehicle? Fast-whitegood perhaps? I'm at a loss here, I've only heard of fast-fashion.

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

#378

Post by addedlovely »

jadenPete wrote: post #252

I think what bugs me about EU legislation like this is how micro-targeted it is. Why apparel specifically? If waste and a disregard for the finite-ness of natural resources is the problem, why not impose a blanket, Pigovian-style tax on all extracted resources? I got the same feeling when they mandated USB-C on Apple devices. If the problem of waste were tackled categorically, then the state wouldn’t need to get invo…

I agree wholeheartedly, seems to be a symptom of bureaucracy. Rules upon rules that end up as the status quo without consolidation and a good refactor.

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

#379

Post by perfmode »

anymouse123456 wrote: post #189

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.

Major fashion houses have been caught destroying clothes to prop up the value of the brand.

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

#380

Post by lm28469 »

anymouse123456 wrote: post #189

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.

> As if companies are just out here wantonly destroying otherwise valuable goods that could have been easily sold at a profit instead.

I remember watching a documentary in which they tracked a package of coffee returned to amazon (unopened). It traveled through half of Europe to end up in an incinerator in Slovakia, which is funny because amazon doesn't even operate there.

Big companies are doing a lot of weird shit because at their scale if it's even 1ct cheaper to burn 10 coffee pods vs reprocessing them back in their store it's going to make a huge difference in the long run.

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