Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

EU ban on destruction of unsold clothes and shoes enters into application

environment.ec.europa.eu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 322 posts

Re: EU ban on destruction of unsold clothes and shoes enters into application

#61

Post by microtonal »

comrade1234 wrote: post #32
xnx wrote: post #8

Is this a problem in the EU? I often think in terms of home remodels that a family might do at least once. Those can easily fill a dumpster with tons of garbage. That's much more waste than a family could ever generate directly or indirectly in clothing.

I lived in a small building along with a French family with 5 children. The amount of trash they had every week was incredible. We had our small trash bag and theirs would be a heap of bags chest high. I sometimes wondered if he was throwing out trash from his business too. While living there the system changed from paying for a disposal service to pre-buying special bags that cost around 2.50chf per 35L bag. The Fre…

Did they still have children wearing diapers? If so, that's your answer.

Re: EU ban on destruction of unsold clothes and shoes enters into application

#62

Post by rzwitserloot »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #44
tancop wrote: post #24

some places already do this for food where anything thats after sell by date but still safe to eat has to be donated to a food bank. i think it should be expanded to cover more categories than food and clothes when reuse and recycling infra grows to take the demand. its not just good for the environment it also prevents producers from restricting supply to keep their profits high. the ultimate goal is make it illegal…

Who pays for the logistics cost of moving and stocking these products in discount stores and giveaway centers? That is a large percentage of the total cost of production and the reason disposal is cheaper. If those costs are paid for by taxpayers then the consumers are in effect involuntarily buying products they would not have otherwise bought, just with more steps. We already see this with agricultural subsidies. I…

It's a somewhat blunt instrument used to internalize some externalities: Making a product and then destroying it is wasteful, and the market will fix all internalized costs of that waste, but some of those costs are externalized. Having society pay somewhat for producing clothes that are then worn, that's one thing. Having society pay for pointless waste is another.

What you've said is: Looking only at the internalized costs, pointless-wasting a percentage of clothes costs X but reduces clothes cost in the store by Y, with Y being larger than X.

Okay. Irrelevant - that math doesn't include externalized costs. It may well be that this is a stupid idea, but "market decided destroying some clothes was more efficient" doesn't prove anything unless you can show that the size of the externalized costs to this process are 0 or close enough to 0 to have no meaningful relevance.

Re: EU ban on destruction of unsold clothes and shoes enters into application

#64

Post by herbst »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #44
tancop wrote: post #24

some places already do this for food where anything thats after sell by date but still safe to eat has to be donated to a food bank. i think it should be expanded to cover more categories than food and clothes when reuse and recycling infra grows to take the demand. its not just good for the environment it also prevents producers from restricting supply to keep their profits high. the ultimate goal is make it illegal…

Who pays for the logistics cost of moving and stocking these products in discount stores and giveaway centers? That is a large percentage of the total cost of production and the reason disposal is cheaper. If those costs are paid for by taxpayers then the consumers are in effect involuntarily buying products they would not have otherwise bought, just with more steps. We already see this with agricultural subsidies. I…

> Who pays for the logistics cost of moving and stocking these products in discount stores and giveaway centers?

All the examples I know of (Austria, Switzerland) are social clubs/associations (whatever that is called) and DO NOT depend on tax payer money.

Re: EU ban on destruction of unsold clothes and shoes enters into application

#65

Post by toast0 »

josephcsible wrote: post #54
nieksand wrote: post #36

It seems like this policy would lead to shortages in less common sizes of clothing.

How do you figure?

If your minimum run is 1000 of a size, and you can only really sell 500 because it's an uncommon size, and you would prefer to sell at full price or not at all, seems like making that size no longer fits your plans.

Re: EU ban on destruction of unsold clothes and shoes enters into application

#66

Post by cromka »

dash2 wrote: post #58

I don’t understand why they would ban this rather than charge for it. It seems very likely that destroying unsold clothes is sometimes the socially efficient thing to do, even after taking into account the environmental externalities.

Because it promotes recycling instead of being another tax.

Re: EU ban on destruction of unsold clothes and shoes enters into application

#67

Post by maccard »

xnx wrote: post #8

Is this a problem in the EU? I often think in terms of home remodels that a family might do at least once. Those can easily fill a dumpster with tons of garbage. That's much more waste than a family could ever generate directly or indirectly in clothing.

I did a remodel last year. I filled 2 largeskips by the end of it. This is the first large job this house has had in 10 years, and it’s a 130 year old house.

The cafe at the bottom of my street has roughly that amount of waste collected every 2 weeks - they fill their commercial trash bin every 2 days. I don’t know how much of that is waste vs old food but they generate orders of magnitude more waste than I do even when I’m making a huge mess.

Re: EU ban on destruction of unsold clothes and shoes enters into application

#68

Post by flowerbreeze »

josephcsible wrote: post #54
nieksand wrote: post #36

It seems like this policy would lead to shortages in less common sizes of clothing.

How do you figure?

It seems plausible. Less common sizes have a lower chance of being sold out, so if they can no longer be destroyed at the end and need to be further managed at lower quantities, it can become more cost effective to simply not make them. Whether it is true or not, I don't know.

Re: EU ban on destruction of unsold clothes and shoes enters into application

#69

Post by UltraSane »

charlieyu1 wrote: post #59
UltraSane wrote: post #57

It should be illegal for stores to throw away edible food.

Makes it more expensive for everyone and also decentivize donating food to homeless or anyone in need.

how does NOT destroying edible food make food more expensive?

Re: EU ban on destruction of unsold clothes and shoes enters into application

#70

Post by dgellow »

zkmon wrote: post #56
dgellow wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The state of perishable goods is much worse. A lot is dumped in food and short shelf-life items. Nothing can be done here. That’s already regulated in multiple countries

That's interesting. Mind telling how regulation would stop dumping of expired or unconsumed food and other stuff?

Check France 2016 food waste ban: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/feb/04/french-law-for...

And the more recent non-food waste ban follow-up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Waste_and_Circular_Econom...

Post reply on HN