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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

#721

Post by em-bee »

wahnfrieden wrote: post #469
em-bee wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

through demand at first. clothes designers are hopefully going to demand smaller batches to avoid getting punished for overproducing. but if that doesn't work, then yes, maybe regulation is necessary. tricky though because manufacturing is often outside of the EU. overproduction needs to be made more uneconomical than smaller batches. if that is really the issue. i really doubt that large batches of production are ac…

How much longer do you wait to see if demand solves it? It hasn't. The problem has gotten worse

well the laws have just been changed. so i'd say we should observe what effect they will have.

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

#722

Post by aurea »

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'm no expert and don't know the full extent of what's already happening and what this ban would change, but I would say there is evidence that this is already happening.

In a recent episode of Clive Myrie's African Adventure where he goes to Ghana, he "heads to one of the world’s biggest second-hand markets to meet the designers giving discarded clothes a second chance".

They show a lady that bought a "crate" of random unsold clothes for around 500 USD, and she prays before opening it hoping it will contain clothes in good condition she can resell. The show claims that on a "good day" she can make something like 50 USD on such a crate.

They also (very) briefly show a huge landfill of what appear to be discarded clothes.

Keep in mind that this is only an entertainment show, so this is most likely only the tip of the iceberg.

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002q72g

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

#723

Post by mfost »

gwerbin wrote: post #519
randomNumber7 wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you throw some plastics into a coal fired power plant it is almost the same as if you would burn oil.

I have a feeling nobody is paying particularly close attention to capturing usable energy from this process

There is in France a kind of shared network of hot water used to heat up our homes (well, those that are connected and paying into the system at least). Part of the system works by burning trash and capturing the heat in the process. Supposedly they also work on using renewable energies to do the work.

Some people argue that the whole system is going against the objectives of recycling stuff but at least it's better than just burning it to get rid of it.

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

#724

Post by pwagland »

csense wrote: post #511

I don't like destruction of perfectly usable items, and I think it's terrible that some brands destroy unsold $40 shirts to protect their branding and pricing power, rather than selling them for $20 or giving them away to the poor. But I like less the implications for private property ownership of this sort of regulation. If I own an item I should be able to destroy it if I want; the government shouldn't be able to t…

Even ignoring that "you" as an individual are not affected by this, there are plenty of things that "you" as an individual cannot do with your own property. For example, a lot of places in the US live under a HOA, and they often restrict what you can do with the frontage of your property. Many people live in places where trees have some form of protected status.

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

#725

Post by BoredomIsFun »

epolanski wrote: post #699
BoredomIsFun wrote: post #689

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Modern clothing is terrible, plastic filled, hardly resists multiple washings. This isn't the 1990s/2000s anymore where you could buy mid budged solid apparel and keep it forever. The gold existed, up to pre COVID. But since then and the rapid spread of fast fashion collecting cloth wastes is a bad business. Hard disagree. Live in Central Asia, buy locally produced relatively cheap clothes and they have been lastin…

You're not really describing fast fashion, aren't you?

No I am describing "modern closing", as in GP post.

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

#726

Post by lan321 »

epolanski wrote: post #549
tjwebbnorfolk wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One man's trash is another man's treasure. They will be able to sell them for pennies on the dollar so that some fraction of them can be resold for cheap in Africa or somewhere else poor. Those companies can then dispose of them however they wish. The reseller makes a small profit, and the original moanufacturer gets the PR of "clothing the poor" or whatever. And, as usual, EU regulations achieve absolutely nothing -…

1. Modern clothing is terrible, plastic filled, hardly resists multiple washings. This isn't the 1990s/2000s anymore where you could buy mid budged solid apparel and keep it forever. The gold existed, up to pre COVID. But since then and the rapid spread of fast fashion collecting cloth wastes is a bad business. 2. The market for vintage quality clothing is super strong and booming. You don't need to export it. 3. No…

1. You can buy a cotton tshirt from LIDL for 3 bucks and it'll hold for years. It won't be cut perfectly or have the softest material but it's definitely not bad.

Of course, if I get it from Temu for 6 cents it'll probably fall apart in a week, but modern clothing isn't really covered by "the cheapest thing I can find".

Same for ultralight fabrics, that, while lovely in summer, usually get trashed in a season or two simply because the thing weighs fuck all.

I'd even say we're in a golden age for clothing. I can get a motorcycle jacket that can slide at 80kmh for 40 bucks with shoulder and elbow protectors and a thermo layer insert.

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

#727

Post by hilbert42 »

miki123211 wrote: post #718
hilbert42 wrote: post #713

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"...it literally costs less to make surplus items than to scrap them." Right, my rhetorical point somewhat expanded here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47031527 "But you can't entirely blame the clothing markets..." Nor stupid consumers, but watering down blame will weaken resolve to fix the problem. Perhaps it should become fashionable to criticize those who buy too many clothes by asking "do you really need…

It's far easier to ostracize cigarette smokers (because you can see them smoke). You don't really know how many clothes somebody has unless you really pay attention to them, and nobody does.

There are multiple ways to tackle the problem, once we had competitions such as 'Miss World', 'Miss America', etc. that were popular but which now are very much seen as sexist.

The message would soon get across if being seen browsing in a clothing store wasn't the best look (like being seen in a porn shop is embarrassing). Or imagine the impact it were embarrassing to be seen at a fashion show or buying fashion magazines. Throughout history there have been bigger changes in social attitudes than that.

A rowdy mob picketing a few fashion shows would attract world attention to the problem.

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

#728

Post by Eupolemos »

Eupolemos wrote: post #656
linehedonist wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 :)

We all have in Europe and the US - but it too is a sign of harsh climate change, because the reason it is cold "down here" on our latitudes is that the arctic is super hot, pushing the cold down to us.

Perhaps some added details would be nice?

In Nuuk they have had 11 degrees celsius. January has been, on average, 8 degrees above the norm. They are having the highest temperatures since 1784.

It is warmer in Greenland than in Denmark.

They now have to close down ski-slopes in Greenland.

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

#729

Post by skeptic_ai »

makingstuffs wrote: post #614
skeptic_ai wrote: post #599

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They won’t “sell”. Imagine LV selling originals in Africa , Africa would immediately resell them in Europe and us and Asia for much higher price and dilute the brand. It will be officially sold to a reseller, not officially they will pay a special African company to destroy it. So same shit as before. Slightly more expensive. No big brand would ever sell their originals that didn’t sell cheap.

> No big brand would ever sell their originals that didn’t sell cheap This is just inherently incorrect. In Europe we have a load of outlet villages which is where big brands do exactly that. It’s where I do most of my shopping. Last year I bought two pairs of Nike Dunks for £25 a pop. I bought Salomon hiking shoes for £60 instead of £140. A pair of Levis 501s for £20. Just an example or my most recent purchases.

Nike yeah, but not luxury brands usually.

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

#730

Post by abiro »

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…

A lot of the apparel being destroyed is unsold inventory of up-market brands to protect their pricing power. If they shipped that to less affluent countries for destruction, it's unlikely that they'd be destroyed, because those items would fetch a good price on the black market.
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