EU ban on destruction of unsold clothes and shoes enters into application • Hacker News Board

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

#181

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jul 18, 2026, 6:51 PM UTC

dinfinity wrote: post #149

outime wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "regulation kills businesses" saying is often (not always) exactly right.

Is it? What is the proof for that? I think we've seen time and time again that self-regulation of the industry doesn't work and that businesses will gladly fuck over society if they can get away with it and make more money. Usually that behavior is even defended with saying "Well, it's not their responsibility to solve society's issues. They are there to make money." Barring nationalization of an industry, heavy regu…

[deleted]

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

#182

Post by NoImmatureAdHom » Sat, Jul 18, 2026, 6:54 PM UTC

cbg0 wrote: post #168

thefourthchime wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EU is doing everything it can to fail. The only thing that seems to be coming out of the EU in the last 20 years is regulation. It seems to be its only invention and contribution to itself. They have no upper bounds on creativity when it comes to creating rules that disrupt business. I can't tell if this is coming from jealousy or incompetence—or perhaps a combination of both. They see the rest of the world, espe…

You're arguing in favor of destroying unworn clothes instead of donating to charity or discounting them as somehow being good for business? The point of this is to control against wasteful business practices, not a ban on producing or selling clothes. The EU is a $23 trillion economy, hardly a slouch even though it is underperforming. The VW example is actually something you probably don't understand - they're failin…

Neat info. I would guess that Toyota produces twice as many vehicles per employee at least in part because the regulatory and social environment where Toyota operates is better.

There is often an underlying sensible economic reason for doing things like destroying perfectly wearable shoes or burning edible crops. Understanding involves admitting things people don't want to admit to themselves.

Nike destroying shoes: the shoes they make are just cheap synthetics and foam, and the per-pair materials and manufacturing cost is a small part of the cost of the shoes. Nike is a marketing company that sorta does shoes. The shoes themselves aren't a very important part of the value they provide to people who buy their shoes. People who buy their shoes are buying a social signal about who they are and how much money they have that doesn't work if the shoes are too cheap.

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

#183

Post by altairprime » Sat, Jul 18, 2026, 6:54 PM UTC

toast0 wrote: post #105

josephcsible wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But clothes aren't perishable, so why would you only be able to sell 500, rather than it just taking twice as long to sell all 1000?

Fashionable clothes are perishable. "Nobody" wants to buy clothes from last season or last year. Storing the clothes until they come back in fashion is expensive... and some materials really won't be useful after sitting for 10 years anyway. (Elastic bands really are perishable)

> Fashionable clothes are perishable.

False. Not all apparel demand is for street cred, and non-‘season’ clothes can still be fashionable. ‘Last season’ is about wealth signaling and FOMO, and while I do love fashion as an entertainment and my hobby in design of it, the level of flux we have now in everyday clothing shapes and fabrics is openly hostile to the non-wealthy being clothed well. I don’t know if the EU’s regulations will work in full or at all, but I’m cheering them for trying.

A while back someone on Tumblr noted that they would buy and wear a full 360° hue spectrum of 360 t-shirts in spectrum order from 0..359, just to fuck with people’s minds as their shirt is the same color day after day until suddenly “wait, I thought your shirt was green” makes the people around them feel like they’re hallucinating en masse. This joke — well, it’s not a joke, this product with great fit would sell out even at 30° intervals! — T-shirts are shaped the same year after year, and fast fashion has had to resort to mining old brand imagery to try and convince people to buy them. Meanwhile, it’s impossible to find unprinted t-shirts at outlier sizes, because that’s slightly less profitable than waves of shapeless L-XL junk. Yes, I’m fine with Hot Topic collaborations, but they need to stop being the market majority.

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

#184

Post by mnewme » Sat, Jul 18, 2026, 6:55 PM UTC

radu_floricica wrote: post #129

> To prevent misuse, businesses relying on these exemptions must provide proof (e.g. documents or test results) and publish annual reports on what they have discarded. I wonder if anybody is keeping track of everything a mid size business needs to take care of. Each particular report probably sounds like a reasonable request, but by now they're probably well into hundreds, and they're all outside the actual scope of…

This whole story that Europe suffers from overregulation is just in parts true, and mainly lazy thinking.

In fact there was a study by an American law school that came to the conclusion that the US has more bureaucracy than many European countries…

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

#185

Post by csydas » Sat, Jul 18, 2026, 7:00 PM UTC

graemep wrote: post #25

ChrisLTD wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to start somewhere, no? We have laws against stealing and murder and folks don’t usually go around saying they should be removed from the books because some people still steal and commit murder.

Yes, but those laws are pretty effective. They do deter murderers and thieves, and take them out of society so they cannot repeat their offences. Ill thought out regulations can make things worse - I am convinced this is the case for the UK's Online Safety Act, for example. That (and the proposed ban on social media for under 16s) is also promoted on "we must do something" grounds. I am very much in favour of some pr…

>Yes, but those laws are pretty effective. They do deter murderers and thieves

This is really not true at all for violent crimes. Acts of violence are not really done by rational actors, same with many crimes. The death penalty / life in prison does not deter someone who has already decided that violence is an acceptable response to situations, and the story is similar with non-violent crimes; deterrence isn't really considered when someone has already made the decision to steal or do drugs. Deterrence doesn't change the conditions that contribute to those sorts of crimes; the law is more about restoring society as best it can, and in many countries it's about retribution / revenge more than anything.

With corporations, the conditions that lead to the undesired behavior is economical, and addressing the undesired behavior through economic methods seems appropriate -- if it's no longer economical to perform the undesired behavior, the company has to decide where they want to eat the cost.

In the case of the EU ban from the article, I suppose some companies may make the decision to pack up and leave, but my experience is many in the EU would be pretty okay with this with regards to clothing. There is a lot of interest in EU regarding sustainable, made in EU clothing and reusability, etc.

So if the goal is just to reduce clothing product waste in EU, losing fast-fashion companies and some luxury brands that most of the population won't / can't buy anyways probably isn't going to be such a big deal.

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

#186

Post by altairprime » Sat, Jul 18, 2026, 7:00 PM UTC

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #180

altairprime wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nike certainly could choose to sell at a discount rather than grind unsold shoes into rubber. They have a wealth-signal brand to maintain, however, so they will resist doing so if at all possible.

Is it really the case that Nike is a wealth signalling brand? In the investigation I think you're referring to ( https://www.fastcompany.com/90697259/nike-appears-to-be-shre... ), I find Nike's side of the story much more plausible: if they find in processing returns that a shoe appears to have been altered, they prefer to reuse the shoe materials for other purposes, rather than carefully inspecting individual shoes…

Regarding ‘wealth signaling’, a similar lens to mine would be ‘brand dilution’, which is certainly a more widely-accepted concept in business management; see also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48959809

The EU has disagreed with Nike, and the law is now in effect.

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

#187

Post by cbmuser » Sat, Jul 18, 2026, 7:02 PM UTC

mnewme wrote: post #184

radu_floricica wrote: post #129

> To prevent misuse, businesses relying on these exemptions must provide proof (e.g. documents or test results) and publish annual reports on what they have discarded. I wonder if anybody is keeping track of everything a mid size business needs to take care of. Each particular report probably sounds like a reasonable request, but by now they're probably well into hundreds, and they're all outside the actual scope of…

This whole story that Europe suffers from overregulation is just in parts true, and mainly lazy thinking. In fact there was a study by an American law school that came to the conclusion that the US has more bureaucracy than many European countries… Recommended read: https://www.andybudd.com/archives/2026/04/the-lazy-myth-that...

You haven’t dealt with German bureaucracy then.

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

#188

Post by mattalex » Sat, Jul 18, 2026, 7:03 PM UTC

sajithdilshan wrote: post #87

I’m pretty sure all those brands would now export those clothes to non-EU Balkan countries or even Turkey to be destroyed.

Why do you assume that the entire EU has brain damage and did not think of this _most obvious_ loophole? Sure the companies could commit crimes but if that is enough of a reason not to pass laws then we better start striking murder of the books as well.

The EU cannot control every avenue you might be sneaking products out for destruction. The goal is not to prevent all sort of destruction, just make it risky enough not to be worth it: Since it's illegal to do, you now have something to fear when you try to get away with your (now) crime.

ESPR regulates the entire placement of products, not only the destruction, e.g. the Digital Product Passport (DPP) which every product has to have (it's slowly being phased in over the coming decade) gives information about repairability, resource used, recyclability,... To do the exporting for destruction you would need to fake the entire paper trail of the product, committing countless numbers of document forgery.

In general the "you are not allowed to destroy unsold goods" part is arguably the small element of ESPR. ESPR also contains the right-to-repair legislation, where ESPR introduces requirements (or at the very least disclosure requirements) for - Design for durability - Availability of spare parts - Access to repair information - Software support obligations - Design for repairability / Restricting design practices intended to hinder repair

The "don't destroy working items" is just a one component of this. The more important component is the DPP which makes the product lifetime traceable.

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

#189

Post by altairprime » Sat, Jul 18, 2026, 7:04 PM UTC

cbmuser wrote: post #187

mnewme wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This whole story that Europe suffers from overregulation is just in parts true, and mainly lazy thinking. In fact there was a study by an American law school that came to the conclusion that the US has more bureaucracy than many European countries… Recommended read: https://www.andybudd.com/archives/2026/04/the-lazy-myth-that...

You haven’t dealt with German bureaucracy then.

> You haven’t dealt with German bureaucracy then.

‘Europe’ is not substitutable by ‘Germany’: a one state counter-example does not substantiate a disproof of a union. Texas is not representative of how U.S. patent law works. Florida is not representative of how U.S. business regulation works. So, the recent HN post about German incorporation slowness fails, in isolation, to disprove the claim above that the US is more regulated than the EU; you’ll need to make your own case (or relevant citations!) about the EU (or Europe) rather than just Germany to be taken seriously here. Do you argue that “many” is the minority case out of all European countries? Are you evaluating difficulty weighted by GDP? Are you evaluating EU and non-EU together or separately? etc.

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

#190

Post by tliltocatl » Sat, Jul 18, 2026, 7:05 PM UTC

cassianoleal wrote: post #2

How long until they start shipping those abroad where they will become toxic bonfires?

At that point they might skip the bonfire part (or the locals would without asking their permission), which is kinda the whole point.