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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

#421

Post by cromka »

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.

It couldn't have been easily sold because brands establish a floor below they don't want to go with value to maintain their perceived premium.

It's been known for ages that they operate like this. Some more ethical ones cut off the labels from the garment before they sell it in bulk. Most will destroy the items altogether.

This legislation targets this vanity and I applaud it.

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

#422

Post by eddythompson80 »

cyclotron3k wrote: post #398
miki123211 wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This is a fantasy. No one is going to pay you to take your waste away and dispose of it. You would have to pay them. So now there's a strong financial incentive to a) not over produce, b) sell the clothes - even if it means selling them for next to nothing.

lol, paying someone to "take your waste away and dispose of it" has been a stable of the "recycle" industry in western countries for 3 decades now. It took China putting on regulations on their side to disrupt that industry. Now you have to find other smaller economies to do that.

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

#423

Post by niels8472 »

nkrisc wrote: post #402
miki123211 wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. Why wouldn’t they just turn around and resell the clothes? Surely these companies aren’t paying H&M for the privilege of destroying their surplus clothes, so by reselling them they’ll be gettin…

They would destroy clothing because it is not sold. This already happens to second hand clothing that is shipped to Africa. Part of it is sold, part of it is dumped. This is well documented.

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

#424

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

birdsongs wrote: post #399
cperciva wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they knew in advance that the clothing wouldn't sell, they would never have made it! But companies stockpile goods in anticipation of potential demand. For example, they'll "overproduce" winter coats because some winters are colder than average. This sort of anti-overproduction law means that the next time there's an unexpected need -- for example an unusually cold winter -- there will be a shortage because there…

Do we really need warehouses full of "just in case" inventory? It's not life or death, it's just slightly more profitable for companies to overproduce than it is for them to attempt to meet demand exactly. Climate change is coming, fast and brutal. I'm okay with these multi-billion-dollar revenue companies making a few points less in profits, if it means slowing climate change by even a fraction of a fraction of a po…

Companies can't meet demand exactly, no matter what profit margin they take, because it's not possible to predict demand exactly. Biasing towards overproduction is how you minimize the risk of shortages when there's a bit more demand than you expected.

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

#426

Post by cromka »

A good way to understand this is to think about Apple and how they refuse to run Black Friday or any other type of sales. They just don't. If they do, they're very modest.

This helps to maintain the value of the product and for consumers to not defer purchase until sale event.

Clothing companies are similar. The actual product is worth pennies, but they'll refuse to sell for 10% of RSP because who would be buying them at the full price? They'll do 50%, maybe 70 discount and that's it. They destroy whatever they don't sell. Rinse, repeat, four times a year in this crazy, fast fashion reality

It's a known practice and they've been going on like this for ages.

Fashion is vain by definition and this whole industry is very wasteful of our resources. This legislation is meant to help mitigate this.

What's gonna change long term is manufacturers will be keeping more items on sale for longer and the fast fashion cycles will slow down. Hopefully they'll start competing with quality and workmanship thus, in turn, giving EU textile industry a new chance to survive Asian competition.

THIS IS GOOD FOR EU ECONOMY!

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

#427

Post by catlikesshrimp »

miki123211 wrote: post #373
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…

I live in a poor country. People here buy "American clothes" which importers get inside "pacas" (random bundles). Those clothes come USED from rich countries.

My assumption is these clothes are dumped to someone to get rid of them, and then that person bundles them and ships them to poor countries. Once here, someone buys the bundles, sort the content according to their expected retail price and sells them to resellers.

There is junk that can't be sold and is destroyed. Except in some cases, like in Chile, where they are just dumping the used junk "intact" in the desert.

Prohibiting destroying new clothes is a net positive. There is market for clothes in poor countries, but it is already being exploited. Some clothes will always be dumped in poor countries, but not all of it can be resold. The manufacturers will make less clothes, there is no way around it.

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

#428

Post by kube-system »

smt88 wrote: post #279
kube-system wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because a country has clothing in it doesn’t mean all of the people in that country have clothing. There are people in rich countries that need clothes. Clothing wears out, it’s a perpetual need and perpetually disposed.

What country has a clothing shortage? Be specific. The most desperate povert I've ever seen was in India. You know what people were using to make tents to live in? Clothes. Poor people have been making clothes for thousands of years without any help from heavy industry, and it's incredibly cheap to produce long-lasting cotton clothing. Clothing isn't really a perpetual need the way you frame it. A single garment can…

I’m not suggesting that any countries have clothing shortages.

However, countries don’t wear clothes. People do. People sometimes have shortages of clothing in many places.

For example, here in the United States people sometimes experience poverty and may sometimes experience a lack of suitable clothing. This happens at the same time that there are also people in the US throwing away clothing that they do not use. This is because those people are different people in different immediate locations.

The reasons that people lack clothing is not because there is not enough clothing in existence. It is because the clothing is not distributed universally to every person who needs it.

If I have seen this with my own two eyes in the US, then I am sure it happens in other places.

> A single garment can last decades if it's synthetic or allowed to fully dry between uses.

So? A person with the ass ripped out of their jeans or a hole in their shoe doesn’t give a fuck whether other clothes last 10 years.

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

#429

Post by reddalo »

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 :)

The problem is that one cold winter doesn't mean we fixed the problem. We need to look at the average change throughout the years, and that's very worrying.

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

#430

Post by ryantgtg »

eddythompson80 wrote: post #422
cyclotron3k wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a fantasy. No one is going to pay you to take your waste away and dispose of it. You would have to pay them. So now there's a strong financial incentive to a) not over produce, b) sell the clothes - even if it means selling them for next to nothing.

lol, paying someone to "take your waste away and dispose of it" has been a stable of the "recycle" industry in western countries for 3 decades now. It took China putting on regulations on their side to disrupt that industry. Now you have to find other smaller economies to do that.

You appear to be agreeing with the person you’re replying to.
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