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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

#631

Post by ragall »

dash2 wrote: post #626
camillomiller wrote: post #586

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That's a fair criticism, but a far cry from the blanket anti-regulation reaction that we get from some people here.

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

#632

Post by mulmen »

quotemstr wrote: post #623
Mordisquitos wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Regulation is not about knowing better than the market. It is about correcting harmful externalities that markets would not solve on their own.

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

#633

Post by hilbert42 »

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.

"financial incentive to a) not over produce, b) sell the clothes - even if it means selling them for next to nothing."

That's not how it works in practice, with the economies of scale/production it makes more economic sense to produce goods surplus to requirements then destroy remaining stock so it will not detract from/devalue sales of next/forthcoming product.

It's an old trick and applies not only to clothes but many goods. There are variations such as destroying trade-ins, used equipment etc. rather than sell it to remove it from the market (thus only new equipment is available).

Some companies took this to extremes in that they'd only rent equipment which would be withdrawn from the market and deliberately destroyed at the end of its service life so it couldn't be sold or ratted for spare parts (photocopier manufacturers were notorious for this). IBM used a cleaver approach with its computers, they'd sell off old computers as 'valuable' scrap (some parts could be still useful to others) but anything deemed as spares for their existing machines would be partially disabled (still useful but couldn't be used as a spare part). For example, they'd break the edge connectors off circuit boards but leave the electronic components intact.

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

#634

Post by [deleted] »

im3w1l wrote: post #505
Mordisquitos wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you a high-information voter? If so, could you please provide information about any consumer industry that comes even close to the apparel industry in terms of a) ubiquity and market scale and b) destruction of unsold but undamaged items while still producing equally functional equivalents for market? Is there such a thing as fast-cutlery? Or fast-furniture? Maybe fast-book or fast-vehicle? Fast-whitegood perhaps…

I feel like there is a lot of waste in packaging specifically. Like way, way more colorful plastic polymers go into the trash way faster making products look appealing on the shelf than from clothing. Don't have the numbers to back it up though.

[deleted]

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

#635

Post by pprotas »

cm2012 wrote: post #542
Mordisquitos wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you a high-information voter? If so, could you please provide information about any consumer industry that comes even close to the apparel industry in terms of a) ubiquity and market scale and b) destruction of unsold but undamaged items while still producing equally functional equivalents for market? Is there such a thing as fast-cutlery? Or fast-furniture? Maybe fast-book or fast-vehicle? Fast-whitegood perhaps…

Uh, yes? Food and consumer electronics are larger or similar scale to fashion and undamaged goods for both are landfilled at massive/similar rates to clothing. Books are the same logic as apparel, "print more than needed, pulp what doesnt sale". Its just much smaller.

Food is perishable, clearly we can’t force manufacturers or shops to keep unsold perished stock.

Unsold electronics aren’t destroyed on a seasonal basis to make room for a new collection.

Same goes for books… and pulp from booms can create new paper to print new books on

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

#636

Post by frm88 »

apparent wrote: post #501

> “If I was David Greene I would be upset, not just because they stole my voice,” Pesca said, but because they used it to make the podcasting equivalent of AI “slop,” a term for spammy, commodified content. “They have banter, but it’s very surface-level, un-insightful banter, and they’re always saying, ‘Yeah, that’s so interesting.’ It’s really bad, because what do we as show hosts have except our taste in commentary…

You seems to have commented on a different topic.

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

#637

Post by joe_the_user »

quotemstr wrote: post #623
Mordisquitos wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

What makes you think that what's cost effective (in terms of money, of course) for a given company involves optimally conserving resources?

The obvious counter-example is that polluting is very cost-effective in an unregulated environment there are others - such as this.

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

#638

Post by mcny »

Saline9515 wrote: post #572
cyclotron3k wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You have to pay to burn them, at home or abroad, and the cost is likely a few % of a clothing piece, where the margin is already >70%. Tl;dr the EU will say "Mission Accomplished" because no clothing has been burned in the EU since 2026(tm), while all of the emissions are produced abroad. The same show has been going on with industry, where the dirtiest parts are done in India or China, so that we can say that we are…

The big brands should be penalized for doing the burning or destroying themselves, enforcing such destruction through contract laws or any formal communication, or even through punishment by denying future contracts.

The receiver on the other end should defect and renege on their contract and sell the goods in the open market for pennies on the dollar. While they won't be able to bring it back to western countries, they should absolutely be able to sell them locally. It should be legal for them to renege on any illegal contracts.

At least that's how I see it.

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

#639

Post by cik »

miki123211 wrote: post #373
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…

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 already how it works today. If there demand curve shows an increase in desire for the same items in another jurisdiction, rather then make more and ship for location, they are reshipped from your geography, even store to store.

Secondly, disposal is one of two things:

1. Donation to a company that collects clothes, who in reality sell these clothes by the tonnage. Most of the clothing recyclers are companies of this nature.

2. Sale at a low value to the company above.

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

#640

Post by metalrain »

BurningFrog wrote: post #69

Their plan for what to do instead is an indifferent shrug: "Instead of discarding stock, companies are encouraged to manage their stock more effectively, handle returns, and explore alternatives such as resale, remanufacturing, donations, or reuse."

That doesn't sound like ban, you have to disclosure yearly the amount of stock you have demolished, but there is no mention of penalty or anything like that.
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