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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

#241

Post by graemep »

wackget wrote: post #229
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…

I think some people here on Hacker News are semi-deluded free market fundamentalists who believe they're going to be future billionaires, so they naturally gravitate towards protecting the rights of big business to do whatever it wants, even if it hurts people and the planet. The only people who think that destroying useful items is a good idea are those who would stand to lose money from it; either by having to pay…

Personally I am surprised how anti-billionaire HN is given its run by a venture capital company and its aim is (indirectly, through reputation building and PR), to get wanna be billionaires to raise capital from them.

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

#242

Post by ninalanyon »

cm2012 wrote: post #219
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…

Essentially: unsold clothing is worth less than zero and recycling most clothing creates more emissions than it saves. So the law is forcing headache for nothing.

If the headache causes companies to improve their product pipelines so that there is less waste then surely there will be less recycling.

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

#243

Post by kleiba »

Seattle3503 wrote: post #142
throwaway198846 wrote: post #2

Can they ship it outside the EU and then destroy it? What happens if truly nobody wants those clothes? Why not just put a carbon tax per weight?

It seems like countries will do anything but tax carbon.

https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/eu/carbon-taxes-europe-20...

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

#244

Post by ragall »

ch4s3 wrote: post #144
wahnfrieden wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clothing has a huge profit margin (when manufactured overseas) especially at the higher end (for brands which do not invest in local production, which is most, because it is also hard to beat Chinese quality). It's better for these brands to over-produce on some items and lose the low-cost inventory, than to under-produce and not meet market demand, to not offer a range of sizes and varieties to meet individual taste…

I get he economics, but I don’t think it follows that it’s a problem governments need to involve themselves in.

You might not think that, but EU citizens think otherwise.

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

#245

Post by Uvix »

babybjornborg wrote: post #230
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…

Apparel firms exist not to clothe people as common sense would suggest but to make a profit, and this practice of erring on the side of overproduction is more profitable than under production. The perfect solution would be to produce exactly the number of goods they will sell, but forecasts aren't perfect so they overproduce. Firms are already incentivised by profit to not waste, so this adds another incentive and re…

How will apparel be cheaper? When they lower production runs, it'll be less available, which will mean prices will go up.

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

#246

Post by numb7rs »

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.

Of course they're not. They're destroying goods that they can't sell at a profit because, for example, the cost of processing some unworn but returned goods outweighs the potential profit from those goods.

In TFA it's estimated that between 4% and 9% of clothing put on the EU market is destroyed before being worn. An admittedly high uncertainty, but even 4% of all clothing sold in the EU is still a heck of a lot of clothes.

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

#247

Post by ninalanyon »

michaelt wrote: post #168
jwr wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> companies who will claim to recycle your products or donate them to good causes in other countries, but actually they’ll just end up on eBay or even in some cases being injected back in to retail channels Isn't that good though? Unless the defects make the product somehow dangerous, this means that it found its way to users who are OK with it, thus avoiding waste. And someone even made money in the process. (all as…

> Isn't that good though? It's good for shoppers (if they're informed), the recycler, and the environment. It's bad for the original maker. Imagine a factory mix-up means some ExampleCo jeans are made of much lower quality materials than normal. They'll wear out much faster. But ExampleCo's quality control does its job, notices the inferior quality before they hit store shelves, and sends them for recycling. If the r…

> ExampleCo's quality control does its job,

Then this will be the pressure that is needed for the company's quality assurance to be improved.

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

#249

Post by wizzwizz4 »

code4life wrote: post #228
lp4v4n wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Here, we don't have winter, fall or anything anymore. It's like this in a lot of places now. We're seeing climate change in the interval of a generation. It's absolutely scary. > The acid rain from the 90s destroyed most of green on adjacent cities and when it is hot it gets in unbearably hot and when it is cold it gets stupidly cold. What country do you live in if you don't mind telling us?

> It's like this in a lot of places now. We're seeing climate change in the interval of a generation. It's absolutely scary. I have lived in the same place my whole life. The weather and seasons are effectively the same, from the day i was born until now. Both observationally and by way of looking at average daily temperatures.

Where I currently live has about the same climate as it did 20 years ago. More variability, I think (people started complaining about weird harvest times about 10 years ago, and we're now all used to chaotic year-on-year yields), but roughly the same averages. Flood infrastructure needs maintenance, but not a redesign. However, the behaviour of the migratory wildlife has changed, and you only have to travel a few dozen miles before you reach somewhere that has needed to make significant changes to their traditional climate-related infrastructure.

"A lot" doesn't mean all, and "my home isn't an example!" doesn't disprove the claim.

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

#250

Post by bravoetch »

tossandthrow wrote: post #210
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.

Companies should be free to do whatever they want, as long as they pay for all their negative externalities. It is not OK for anyone to litter, also not companies. One can speculate that this is an easy way to force the companies to pay for their externalities - given that production in third countries are much harder to touch for the EU.

Clothing items are so cheap to make it's hard to believe. I used to work in a distribution warehouse for a national baby and children's clothing chain. Containers would arrive from China and we'd enter items into the warehouse stock system. Cost basis for most items was under 10 cents.
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