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

environment.ec.europa.eu

411–420 of 894 posts

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

#411

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…

more market economics framing of life, as if numerous very smart people haven't already tried to make this paradigm work for society, and failed.

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

#412

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…

Here in the Seattle area, plenty of sub-freezing days (which is itself unusual for the area, in 25 years of living here), just no precipitation. And you know what Seattle is known for, especially in the winter? But when we do get precipitation, it’s warm enough in the mountains that it comes down as rain, not snow. Rough year to be a ski area.

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

#413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The shareholders losing value means that either all clothes drop to shein quality or they just stop making clothes.

OK. We were told creative destruction is good, if some companies exit the market and are replaced by others that offer better value then resources are being allocated more efficiently, no?

Just like other companies came along and offered a better Sears catalog when the internet killed their revenue?

People don't voluntarily lose money. Understand that and the world will way more understandable.

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

#414

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-farm…

How are pigs, rabbits, goats and venison more sustainable? Unless you mean eating meat twice a year.

I live in a farmer family; our cattle needs around one hectare each, because we don't feed them processed food, only grass; because concentrated food is even less sustainable, and more importantly, more expensive than letting them roam (fenced areas)

Rabbit is not sustainable. There were some people trying to commercially rise and sell them and it didn't work. They would need concentrated food, which is expensive.

Goat meat is much more expensive than cows because they are less efficient than cows and pigs and chicken. I know two people who rise goats to sell them, and it doesn't make them money; really, they do it because they kind of like the critters as a pet project.

Only pigs and chickens are more sustainable, precisely because of theirinhumane(?) short life and their genetics. They are very efficient meat producers.

I know poor people who rise chickens and pigs; those animals take longer to reach "maturity", and the meat is not tender; but since the animals are eating whatever they scavenge, it can't be done at scale; again, we would eat meat like twice a year (This might be an exageration, but chicken pig and cow farms really produce all the meat we eat; of those only cows eat grass under the sun)

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

#415

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 feel like you accidentally flipped a minus sign in your equations and then doubled down on your conclusions. Who would pay you to take something away and destroy it for you?

It's fine to come up with creative solutions using an LLM, but you have to apply some critical thing before throwing your weight behind the conclusions!

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

#416
post #144

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.

What’s your big idea

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

#417
post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is not destroying things to create jobs. this is about globalization negatively affecting local culture. clothing especially represents culture. if people can not afford to create their own clothes then that has a negative effect on their culture as a whole.

I don't see how localized culture clothing styles would be destroyed by importing different styles from other countries.

nobody buys the local style because it is more expensive than the imported stuff. as a result the local style dies out, or it doesn't get a chance to be developed in the first place.

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

#418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> so many manufacturers often have methods for marking items that are not covered by the warranty With textiles this is usually a hole punch or something with the tag. With hardware we had the serial number recorded. But consumers don’t care. If they buy something from a vendor they think is selling them something as new and the vendor tells them to go the manufacturer, the customer doesn’t care that you marked it as…

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

This is mostly how statutory warranty works in most countries. It’s actually the retailer who bares the responsibility, but good/big manufacturers will just provide the same direct to consumers.

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

#419
post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A factory might have a minimum order quantity of 10000 units for a product. The products cost $1 landed. You know you can sell 4000 of those products for a total of $15k. This might become a bad deal if dealing with the 6000 extra units costs you money.

maybe this will force factories to change their process. with manufacturing getting cheaper, smaller batches become affordable. at the extreme we can now print books on demand, and improved 3D printing allows one-off items in many more areas. that's the trend we need to push. to get away from wasteful mass production.

Push how? Through regulation? Unclear how else you’d achieve this if it is still worse economically. Buyers don’t want to pay more either.

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

#420

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…

It would not be a good idea because the goal of companies are not to get you to consume only what you need, they want you to consume more. You should check out "Ascension" (it is on Paramount unfortunately). It gives a pretty close up look at China and factory culture and how their entire country is mobilized to push maximum consumption. The corporation's don't view Americans high per-capita consumption as a problem…

> It would not be a good idea because the goal of companies are not to get you to consume only what you need, they want you to consume more.

This regulation is not about consumption but about production. Yes, this would not solve the potential over-consumption (I agree generally with what you say) - people actually buying shit they use once - but imagine how bad it is if for each shit used once the company produce 3x that shit...

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