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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

#361

Post by nothrabannosir »

eclipticplane wrote: post #317
nothrabannosir wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... the vendor tells them to go the manufacturer... Maybe this is the problem. Retailers should cover the statutory warranty on any product they sell.

What do you mean, 'statutory warranty'? At least in the US, aside from a few specific circumstances (door to door sales for example with a '3 day cool off' period) there is no mandatory return policy or timeline.

That sounds like another problem then :)

In the EU (or maybe just my country of origin?) there is certainly statutory warranty. Length and coverage varies per product category.

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

#362

Post by tpm »

LorenPechtel wrote: post #293
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…

You have already gotten two answers showing why this causes the manufacturer to lose money. A third: I hike, enough that pretty much all my gear out there is the good stuff. I do not care one bit about brands and would prefer not to be an ad for the outdoor companies--but I am anyway because it's not just a name. Suppose Big Brand X fails to sell all of this year's design and offloads them as discount brand Y. People…

> Suppose Big Brand X fails to sell all of this year's design and offloads them as discount brand Y.

Does that actually happen? What I see happening instead in the bike clothing market is that either after the season, or if a new design is to be unveiled after several seasons, the items gets heavily discounted (often more than 50%). It's just your decision if you need the most expensive newest items right now or you buy possibly older or out of season designs much cheaper. But the branding is also very much integrated, so it would be hard to change the branding on an existing item.

There are a few brands that try to limit this and keep the discounts in check like Assos, but that only means it's harder to find a heavily discounted item, still possible.

> When you produce quality a policy of not having sales or setting limits on sales makes a lot of sense.

Sure, if you can find customers that accept that, why not. In that case just manufacture fewer items.

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

#363

Post by eastbound »

scotty79 wrote: post #338
babybjornborg wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Overproduction is not an issue. The issue is that they damage unsold things instead selling them for a market price dictated by supply and demand. This is not only clothing and apparel, also sporting goods and many other items. This should be forbidden across all industries. Unsold stock should be delivered to non-profits at no cost for further distribution. If you can't prove that you either sold or transfer to non-…

And suddenly the EU becomes #1 in private non-profits, the first ever non-profits to turn up revenue and reinvest them into stock from Gap and H&M.

Also the first non-profit to build gigalandfills in Africa.

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

#364

Post by CoffeeOnWrite »

usefulcat wrote: post #340
Uvix wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Economically, producing less to start with is not very different from what is currently done, destroying excess inventory. Therefore I don't think it's at all a given that prices will go up.

Destroying the inventory has a cost though.

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

#365

Post by rapidfl »

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…

all that said.. most of the clothes are not so "branded"? Who cares if a GAP or something ends up in outlet or wherever..

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

#366

Post by 0xbadcafebee »

> The ban on destruction of unsold apparel, clothing accessories and footwear and the derogations will apply to large companies from 19 July 2026. Medium-sized companies are expected to follow in 2030. The rules on disclosure under the ESPR already apply to large companies and will also apply to medium-sized companies in 2030

5 months is a pretty short timeline for a large company to change literally its entire business to handle one class of products differently. This affects returns, sales, shipping, contracts with disposal companies, etc.

The weirder part is that they're granting medium and small size companies 4 more years to figure it out. It will take any company a long time to deal with this. So why shaft the large companies? Spite? The difficulty this imposes on them, and any fines from their inability to comply, will be passed down to the consumer.

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

#367

Post by sophrosyne42 »

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…

If firms prodice less, prices will be higher.

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

#368

Post by 0xbadcafebee »

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…

> most of people can't afford cow's meat anymore. Most people are living on pasta and eggs, eventually they eat pig and chicken but that's getting rare.

It shouldn't be cheap. The world got used to the luxury of cheap meat by being unethical and harmful to the environment (humans' environment) and animals.

Cows are insanely resource-intensive to farm, bad for the air, bad for the water, bad for the land. Factory-farmed chicken meat is infamously inhumane, using genetic mutants to produce more meat faster, as well as being bad for the environment. They require more land and water use just to produce the feed for the animals. Both produce toxic runoff that goes into our water and land. Drugs pumped into animals land in us or our water, causing cancer or breeding superbugs. And we accept all these negatives so we can buy a cheap burger we don't need (we have plenty of other food).

Pigs are actually pretty sustainable, as are rabbits, goats, and venison. We used to eat a lot more of them, before the factory animal farms changed our diets to prefer cow and chicken.

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

#369

Post by tuckwat »

thewebguyd wrote: post #350
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…

It’s honestly terrifying. I’m in the PNW and we haven’t had winter yet. Extremely low snowpack in the mountains and not even a single day below freezing where I live. I’ve been observing the change for the past 10 years or so here and this is the first year that’s it’s been so “in your face” obvious instead of just subtle changes and effects. If this is our new normal winter and/or gets rapidly worse we will have a m…

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

#370

Post by charcircuit »

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…

Why would it require becoming a billionaire to benefit? A lot of big companies are able to purchased by the public. There are even fractional shares which lowers the bar even further in being able to get exposure to these companies.
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