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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

#621

Post by Veedrac »

roughly wrote: post #315
cperciva wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they knew in advance that the clothing wouldn't sell, they would never have made it! But companies stockpile goods in anticipation of potential demand. For example, they'll "overproduce" winter coats because some winters are colder than average. This sort of anti-overproduction law means that the next time there's an unexpected need -- for example an unusually cold winter -- there will be a shortage because there…

So they externalize the cost of their own incompetence and you’re suggesting it’s bad to internalize that cost.

This rule isn't internalizing an externality.

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

#622

Post by dash2 »

lores wrote: post #513
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…

If you own an item you want to destroy, no problem. If a company owns an item it want to destroy, it can't anymore. The conflation of persons and corporations has been responsible for an enormous amount of evil, and it's time to start distinguish the two again.

What evil? I think it would be very hard to have a system of law without corporate personhood. Every time you wanted a law to eg ban x, you would need a separate law for corporations.

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

#623

Post by quotemstr »

Mordisquitos wrote: post #307
jadenPete wrote: post #252

I think what bugs me about EU legislation like this is how micro-targeted it is. Why apparel specifically? If waste and a disregard for the finite-ness of natural resources is the problem, why not impose a blanket, Pigovian-style tax on all extracted resources? I got the same feeling when they mandated USB-C on Apple devices. If the problem of waste were tackled categorically, then the state wouldn’t need to get invo…

You have an odd perception of what constitutes "micro-targetting". Why apparel specifically ? Because apparel is specifically the consumer industry where enormous quantities of unsold product are intentionally destroyed to then be replaced in the market by newly made equivalent articles. Why was USB-C mandated specifically on Apple devices? Well here's the thing: it wasn't . It was mandated on smartphones in general…

> Because apparel is specifically the consumer industry where enormous quantities of unsold product are intentionally destroyed to then be replaced in the market by newly made equivalent articles

If that's so bad, why is doing so the cheapest option? What makes you think you know better than the market what's wasteful?

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

#624

Post by waffle_toast »

groundzeros2015 wrote: post #463
throwaw12 wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. It's good exactly because of this. Every company is pushing us to consume more, and Wall Street is at the top of this, growth at all costs (including human lives, mental health, just anything) Only way to save Earth is to stop the Wall Street greed machine. We should be making s…

> Only way to save Earth is to stop the Wall Street greed machine. Wall Street here is a boogie man. Using resources to make life better is actually good. And we keep getting better at it, and doing so in more sustainable and efficient ways. And if it’s not - you fundamentally believe technology is not beneficial. Then all of industrial society needs to be reversed.

making low quality items that wear out quickly and influencing people to over consume just so big businesses profit more is not "using resources to make life better"

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

#625

Post by waffle_toast »

I think I've heard this isn't as much of a think in Europe, but by me sometimes when companies have a bunch of items they can't sell to regular consumers, they sell them for cheap to large thrift stores. Though often this stuff is kinda marked up because its new which sucks but is still better than just burning it.

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

#626

Post by dash2 »

camillomiller wrote: post #586
ragall wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They quite clearly are. Burberry was caught a while ago https://www.bbc.com/news/business-44885983 , but it's well known that every major upmarket brand was doing it to avoid the loss of prestige of sending the items to outlets.

you can try to reason with the people who post comments like the one you're responding to, but the truth is they are just there waiting for anything a regulator does to desparage it, defend corporate and capital, and change nothing about the status quo. The worst part is that they do it thinking they are so edgy for knowing exactly why just another piece of regulation will clearly not work. Funnily enough, the EU tra…

It’s a fair criticism, but note the Draghi report:

“The regulatory burden on European companies is high and continues to grow, but the EU lacks a common methodology to assess it. The Commission has been working for years to reduce the "stock" and "flow" of regulation under the Better Regulation agenda. However, this effort has had limited impact so far. The stock of regulation remains large and new regulation in the EU is growing faster than in other comparable economies. While direct comparisons are obscured by different political and legal systems, around 3,500 pieces of legislation were enacted and around 2,000 resolutions were passed in the US at the federal level over the past three Congress mandate: (2019-2024). During the same period, around 13,000 acts were passed by the EU. Despite this increasing flow of regulation, the EU lacks a quantitative framework to analyse the costs and benefits of new laws.”

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

#627

Post by DigiEggz »

yowayb wrote: post #495
bonzini wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The original comment says "sell them to «resale» companies". Selling goods means being paid for it, while you and the parent comment are both saying money goes in the opposite direction.

This particular thread of the argument can go on for a while. I can't well articulate the doubts I have because I'm not in the industry, but many such well-meaning laws have a tendency to backfire once given enough time for bad/poor actors to game it.

Brings to mind https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perverse_incentive

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

#628

Post by frm88 »

Mordisquitos wrote: post #307
jadenPete wrote: post #252

I think what bugs me about EU legislation like this is how micro-targeted it is. Why apparel specifically? If waste and a disregard for the finite-ness of natural resources is the problem, why not impose a blanket, Pigovian-style tax on all extracted resources? I got the same feeling when they mandated USB-C on Apple devices. If the problem of waste were tackled categorically, then the state wouldn’t need to get invo…

You have an odd perception of what constitutes "micro-targetting". Why apparel specifically ? Because apparel is specifically the consumer industry where enormous quantities of unsold product are intentionally destroyed to then be replaced in the market by newly made equivalent articles. Why was USB-C mandated specifically on Apple devices? Well here's the thing: it wasn't . It was mandated on smartphones in general…

Slight correction: it wasn't even for smartphones alone, it was for portable devices in general [0]. As a consequence, all ebook devices like Kindle etc, vapes and other devices had to switch from Micro-USB to USB-C.

[0] https://commission.europa.eu/news-and-media/news/eu-common-c...

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

#630

Post by shiroiuma »

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…

>The scheme is fairly simple. The criminals rent some land, dump the stuff there, and then have the company go bust, thus leaving the problem to the land owner.

This is what these countries get for having weak laws that allow people to do illegal dumping and then hide behind a corporate veil to avoid accountability.

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