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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

#561

Post by tjwebbnorfolk »

idiotsecant wrote: post #497
tjwebbnorfolk wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea they will, they'll resell what they can, and destroy the rest, probably by throwing them into a giant burn pit in a place with zero environmental regulations.

Ok, let's say that happens. Seems like a net win over throwing all of them in a burn pit.

I live in the US, but I would hope the EU doesn't have "burn pits".

But the 3rd world country they are about to be shipped to definitely does have burn pits that will incinerate both 1) any remaining unsold inventory, and 2) the older clothes that are replaced with the fancy european stuff.

Or better yet, they'll just be thrown into the river like most other things in Africa and SE Asia...

All you're doing is outsourcing your own pollution to make yourself feel better. It's idiotic.

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

#562

Post by awesome_dude »

tjwebbnorfolk wrote: post #557
awesome_dude wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to speculate that it won't "add" ships at all As you say, ships are moving in and out of the EU each year - the question is, how many have "back loads" - if some percentage of the ships leave Europe empty to return to Asia for more manufactured goods, then it seems very likely that they can have the containers of unwanted clothes as part of the trip.

Oh cool, so I can fly commercial all I want at zero marginal CO2 emissions just because they don't have to build an extra plane just for me? I can burn that jet fuel and not feel bad because they were going to burn that gallon of fuel anyway ? Some of these arguments are so silly that I'm starting to understand why the EU thinks regulations are a free lunch to improve the environment with no costs whatsoever.

The analogy doesn't hold.

Airlines adjust capacity to demand — empty seats represent foregone revenue and future flights get cancelled or downsized.

Cargo ships don't work that way. A container ship returns to Asia whether it's carrying 1000 containers or 5000. The marginal emissions of an additional backload container are genuinely close to zero, not as a rhetorical trick but as a structural feature of how bulk shipping economics work.

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

#563

Post by dlcarrier »

XorNot wrote: post #296
Aurornis wrote: post #113

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…

It's not like you wouldn't have this problem anyway though? Like customers have a % of crazy people regardless. I mean the "ididnthaveeggs" subreddit exists purely to make light of people who post reviews on recipe sites where they overtly use the wrong ingredients and then downvote the recipe as a result.

Hah, I just read a one-star review on Goodreads, because the narrator was boring. Goodreads is reviewing the book itself, not an audiobook adaptation.

Also, all I could think of was the Seinfeld episode where George wanted audio books, because he couldn't stand reading in his own voice, but the narrator ended up sounding exactly like him.

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

#564

Post by Sleaker »

hnlmorg wrote: post #394
miki123211 wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Why wouldn’t these non-EU then just sell the goods in those countries? It would mean they turn a cost (destroying) into revenue (sales). It’s not like there isn’t already a massive industry selling counterfeit goods. So in your hypothetical scenario, if those companies are already shady then I could easily see them selling those surplus stock in the same shady markets.

Because the cost of doing business in those markets is probably more than what they could get for the product. And if they lower the price in that market, it might devalue the product line as whole and potentially causes brand damage.

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

#565

Post by _moof »

csense wrote: post #511

I don't like destruction of perfectly usable items, and I think it's terrible that some brands destroy unsold $40 shirts to protect their branding and pricing power, rather than selling them for $20 or giving them away to the poor. But I like less the implications for private property ownership of this sort of regulation. If I own an item I should be able to destroy it if I want; the government shouldn't be able to t…

We aren't talking about "an item." We're talking about an industry that deliberately over-produces because it's better for their balance sheets, which has significant climate implications. This is precisely the sort of scenario where it makes sense for government to step in.

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

#566

Post by thelastgallon »

belorn wrote: post #558
eddythompson80 wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not. Read their comment and mine. This was always, and will always be a thing. It's not a burden, just a marginal cost of business. Instead of paying a European company a €40k to destroy your broken products, you can pay an African one €10k to "recycle" your product. Best of all, you're legally forced to. I can see hundreds of companies lobbying for this because it completely takes them off the hook. "The law say…

There is enough local fraudulent waste management companies that shipping things to Africa to have it "recycled" is just a waste of money and time. Sweden recently had one of the largest fraud cases involving a waste management company, which also became the largest environmental case in Swedish history. The scheme is fairly simple. The criminals rent some land, dump the stuff there, and then have the company go bust…

Oil companies have been doing this for over a century in US. Sell abandoned well to a small llc, llc files bankruptcy, big OilCo off the hook! Everyone happy!

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

#567

Post by cm2012 »

prmoustache wrote: post #538
cm2012 wrote: post #532

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Climate change will probably solve itself within 10 years due to exponential growth of solar panels, batteries and electric cars.

That is delusionnal. The growth is globally way too slow and too late to have a major impact, especially when the climate is already provoking chain reactions like the large emissions from melting permafrost.

Check this comment in 10 years!

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

#568

Post by awesomeusername »

HardwareLust wrote: post #492
awesomeusername wrote: post #487

"The Outlaw Sea" is a book about the long history of the complexity of responsibility, ownership, in international shipping and the ships themselves. It's very good, it should be on the HN standard reading list, much like _The Box_. I'm only interested in comments here from people who have an understanding of the complex world of outsourcing responsibility. TL;DR: International cooperation isn't at a level where ANY…

Two other books I'd recommend are The Outlaw Ocean by Ian Urbina, and Outside The Box by Mark Levinson (author of The Box ).

Thanks, can't wait to read these, didn't know they existed

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

#569

Post by patrickmcnamara »

amalcon wrote: post #533
jazz9k wrote: post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I were these companies, I would just give them all in truckloads to the CEO's son, and have them dispose of it.

It might surprise some people that courts are wise to this sort of thing. Lawmakers generally empower them to ignore such legal fictions.

People on HN never been wise to any law. For some reason they think that law operates like a set of instructions that a CPU operates.

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

#570

Post by hinkley »

cyclotron3k wrote: post #398
miki123211 wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This is a fantasy. No one is going to pay you to take your waste away and dispose of it. You would have to pay them. So now there's a strong financial incentive to a) not over produce, b) sell the clothes - even if it means selling them for next to nothing.

I’ve heard there’s a practice of selling bundles of clothes to Africa and then the purchases pick through the bundle for what’s good and what’s useless. The impression I was left with is that this used to be more lucrative but now you’re almost as likely to get complete garbage as something good. So it’s like a sad loot box.
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