> To prevent misuse, businesses relying on these exemptions must provide proof (e.g. documents or test results) and publish annual reports on what they have discarded.
I wonder if anybody is keeping track of everything a mid size business needs to take care of. Each particular report probably sounds like a reasonable request, but by now they're probably well into hundreds, and they're all outside the actual scope of the business (e.g. it may seem manageable for the bureaucrats designing them, because that's what they deal with all day, but not for a small organization doing... something else).
mnewme 2 minutes ago [-]
This whole story that Europe suffers from overregulation is just in parts true, and mainly lazy thinking.
In fact there was a study by an American law school that came to the conclusion that the US has more bureaucracy than many European countries…
You only write a report if you want the exemption.
The hypothetical business you're imaging shouldn't be looking for an exemption.
The law's effect on small business is conceptually not too different from eg laws against dumping toxic sludge.
no-name-here 28 minutes ago [-]
Per the OP article, this only affects large businesses (and medium businesses after a period of years).
altairprime 1 hours ago [-]
At minimum, any medium business will be tracking disposal costs in its accounting books; the EU rule effectively taxes disposal by imposing regulatory processes upon it, so the net cost of disposal will increase to reflect the paper trail costs. The phased-in ‘large first, medium next’ started a while ago, giving mediums about twice as long (iirc?) to prepare for compliance as larges. One of the more predictable outcomes is that retailers will need to inspect and classify their completed-product waste streams, rather than simply dump every return bucket into the trash. Retailers are expected to do everything in their power to reduce the total volume of material inspected in order to increase profits, which in concert with stricter return regulations already in place, will force them to do various things.
Small retailers that process returns by taking the item out of the envelope, studying it, and then putting it back up for sale (either at full or reduced price, depending on new or cosmetic defect) will be entirely unaffected because their production costs vastly exceed their return inspection costs and they’ve been recording ‘sellable’ vs ‘worn’ vs ‘cosmetic defect’ somewhere this whole time anyways (or else they’d collapse even without these regulations!), and medium businesses will likely find their profits temporarily reduced — but since they were disposing of sellable products to begin with, they can either sell them to recover profits, donate them to reduce taxes, or accept the fractional inspection charge against profits and continue as-is.
Some possibilities: Reduce production defects (slower production/qa times), return rate), Reduce size variability (slower production/qa times), Improve fabric quality (higher production costs, lower future sales), Provide more detailed sizing charts (higher sales cost, lower return rates), Provide more consistent sizing (eg. band size 85 is not 80-90cm between different models and different brands), Reduce production batch sizes (less waste, more shipping costs), Reduce overseas manufacturing (higher cost production, lower cost/time shipping), Sell entire batches until sold out (increased inventory costs, maintains brand wealth-image), Donate wearable clothing to charity (tax deductions, goodwill), Switch from overseas large-batch production to domestic JIT (reduces inventory of never-sold products to zero), and so on.
embedding-shape 46 minutes ago [-]
> but not for a small organization doing... something else
But for you to do your "small organization", shouldn't you be required to have to consider the environment around you?
A bar of course doesn't want to care about the noise the patrons do on the terrace for example, but because we live in the world with other people, they do have to care about this, even if it's "something else" than what they want to do.
Or data centers as another (maybe more contemporary) example, where sometimes they have things that needs to be disposed of in a certain way. Yes, the data center operators aren't in the business of "toxic waste management", but if you want to run a data center, you need to figure out how to deal with the byproducts.
I don't think clothing companies should somehow be magically excepted from having to care about others.
outime 1 hours ago [-]
The "regulation kills businesses" saying is often (not always) exactly right.
dinfinity 1 hours ago [-]
Is it? What is the proof for that?
I think we've seen time and time again that self-regulation of the industry doesn't work and that businesses will gladly fuck over society if they can get away with it and make more money. Usually that behavior is even defended with saying "Well, it's not their responsibility to solve society's issues. They are there to make money."
Barring nationalization of an industry, heavy regulation and/or taxation/subsidizing are the only ways to reliably protect the interests of society. If some businesses get killed in the process, so be it.
6 minutes ago [-]
57 minutes ago [-]
bananamogul 2 hours ago [-]
"Companies may only destroy unsold clothes and shoes in limited cases, such as when items are unsafe or damaged, counterfeit or infringing intellectual property rights, or are rejected by charities or donation schemes."
Nike's unsold, defective, or returned shoes are ground up to make carpet padding. They're processed by the truckload in a large grinding machine.
It seems that under these rules, this would be illegal - ?
altairprime 2 hours ago [-]
Yes, with the exception of ‘unsafe’ where a shoe is used and/or non-cosmetically defective.
The law reduces wasted production inputs — materials, energy, and labor — as well as production outputs — wearable shoes, here. This directly regulates a practice by brands where they destroy wearable clothing rather than see their latest branded fashion worn by people who bought it at a discount or received it for free. This also directly regulates corporations from using grinders, melters, incinerators, landfills, and overseas ‘recycling’ (=landfills) to replace warehouses with retailers, accelerate product cycle times and derive FOMO sales benefits without the cost of reducing their batch sizes. The apparel industry is destroying something like one third of what it produces, so it’s certainly earned regulation of its ‘this shall not be sold’ decisions to its disfavor.
I would expect Nike in the EU market to either increase product prices and/or decrease release intervals until their inventory supply is lowered to meet demand while claiming that it’s the EU’s fault that their hottest shoes aren’t yet available, rather than maintaining their existing cycle times and quantities by donating their wearable, branded, wealth-signaling shoes to be worn by poor people. (Perhaps that’s already begun?)
kelvinjps10 40 minutes ago [-]
Wouldn't they have to make discounts or sell it therefore lowering the price.
altairprime 34 minutes ago [-]
Nike certainly could choose to sell at a discount rather than grind unsold shoes into rubber. They have a wealth-signal brand to maintain, however, so they will resist doing so if at all possible.
SpicyLemonZest 9 minutes ago [-]
Is it really the case that Nike is a wealth signalling brand? In the investigation I think you're referring to (https://www.fastcompany.com/90697259/nike-appears-to-be-shre...), I find Nike's side of the story much more plausible: if they find in processing returns that a shoe appears to have been altered, they prefer to reuse the shoe materials for other purposes, rather than carefully inspecting individual shoes to analyze what the alterations are and whether they might compromise the shoe's performance.
As far as I can tell (although I'm no lawyer, sorry Nike), the point is to reduce waste and to increase recycled content in use. With these two main objectives, what Nike is doing seem to be fitting within that. It's not the "destruction" itself that is bad, but what you do with that after the destruction, recycling it doesn't create waste (or maybe, as much waste) as outright destroying+throwing all of it.
pfdietz 2 hours ago [-]
What is considered recycling? Is convert the clothing into fuel pellets considered recycling? What about thermal decomposition for feedstocks for chemical manufacture (and what if 75% of the mass isn't useful for that and is instead burned in turbines for cogeneration)?
Down-cycling is a thing. Even aluminum and steel get down-cycled.
I have no sympathy for recycling fetishism.
embedding-shape 2 hours ago [-]
From previously linked text:
> The concept of destruction as outlined in this Regulation should cover the last three activities on the waste hierarchy, namely recycling, other recovery and disposal. Preparation for reuse, including refurbishment and remanufacturing, should not be considered destruction. Preventing destruction will reduce the environmental impact of those products by reducing the generation of waste and by disincentivising overproduction.
Basically, does it end up as waste or does it end up being repurposed in some good way? If the former, we should find a way of getting rid of it, if it's the latter, it's A-OK!
altairprime 50 minutes ago [-]
To clarify without using the word ‘waste’ into two simple bullets:
1. Destruction is conversion of any usable product X to any non-X form (even if the new form is usable).
2. Destruction is prohibited (for large businesses, right now).
Usable is not perfectly defined and will be a judgment call, but one can construct a common sense set of ‘what is unusable?’ definitions that an inspector or judge would accept — so long as sellers have not explicitly caused such outcomes:
- Product lacks structural integrity (a loose thread doesn’t count, a missing sleeve does count)
- Product is contaminated (tried on and didn’t fit doesn’t count, motor oil stains does count)
- Product is unsafe (tried on and didn’t fit doesn’t count, underwear returned with safety liner removed may count, product has been worn for more than try-on period may count)
Note that, for example, the EU is likely to say ‘launder it first, then donate it’ for products that are worn and returned but can be safely donated after laundering; so they are specifically aware of some of the loopholes that corps will aim for first.
jjice 2 hours ago [-]
I guess it comes down to if that is considered recycling. I'd personally consider it such, but not sure what the legal definitions will be.
LaundroMat 2 hours ago [-]
Isn't that recycling instead of destroying?
Wicher 2 hours ago [-]
Turning shoes into carpet padding is probably "downcycling". I think recycling would mean most of the shoe would be used for new shoes or something of similar complexity, retaining the grade and value of the input materials.
Downcycling is when you reuse something for a less refined purpose. For instance you can use contaminated plastics (im the sense of somewhat mixed types, bits and bobs of labels etc) to make humble park benches, but you won't be then reusing that low grade park bench plastic to make the Hubble space telescope with.
Still, downcycling into carpet is better than dumping the shoes on a coral atoll of course. Yet it's a step below recycling.
sajithdilshan 2 hours ago [-]
I’m pretty sure all those brands would now export those clothes to non-EU Balkan countries or even Turkey to be destroyed.
mikaeluman 2 hours ago [-]
Indeed. Rather than deal with it, there will just be some shell company in non EU they can export to and have it destroyed there...
Though that will obviously incur a larger cost than today.
sajithdilshan 2 hours ago [-]
Transportation would be costly, but it could be that in whole it would be much cheaper than discarding them in let’s say in Germany. I can imagine the price to destroy 1kg of clothes in Serbia way less than in Germany
b112 2 hours ago [-]
What typically happens is that people buy up these clothes in massive auction/lots, then just sell them on Amazon. As Amazon joins all listings together, 100 sellers of the same item all have the same reviews/etc.
So some slightly damaged shirt, or a shirt returned and such, ends up sold by these secondary sellers as new. This is part of why people destroy clothes upon return, so that secondary sellers can't buy their own returned product at $1, and sell it making more than the original seller would have.
Not to mention, all returns I've been noticing, resold from Amazon, are heavily treated now with some sort of spray. I can only presume bedbugs were getting returned with used clothing...
sajithdilshan 2 hours ago [-]
I don’t think m that’s happening in EU. Most of the clothes I see on Amazon are the same as I find on Temu. Only the prices are higher on Amazon
earth-tattoo 37 minutes ago [-]
Or perpetually store it in an "open warehouse" where it rots over time.
izacus 2 hours ago [-]
Sounds like a lot of extra work which will make this kind of behaviour less financially viable vs. just selling or overproducing it.
thefourthchime 1 hours ago [-]
The EU is doing everything it can to fail. The only thing that seems to be coming out of the EU in the last 20 years is regulation. It seems to be its only invention and contribution to itself. They have no upper bounds on creativity when it comes to creating rules that disrupt business.
I can't tell if this is coming from jealousy or incompetence—or perhaps a combination of both. They see the rest of the world, especially the United States and China, getting richer and more advanced, and their response seems to be to shield themselves from it instead of competing.
Volkswagen in Germany is going to lay off 100,000 jobs and shutter plants. Half of the EU is recklessly in debt. And Germany is supposed to be the good country with the good economy.
cbg0 28 minutes ago [-]
You're arguing in favor of destroying unworn clothes instead of donating to charity or discounting them as somehow being good for business? The point of this is to control against wasteful business practices, not a ban on producing or selling clothes.
The EU is a $23 trillion economy, hardly a slouch even though it is underperforming.
The VW example is actually something you probably don't understand - they're failing because they're an inefficient business, not because of EU regulations or Germany not having a "good economy". Toyota produces almost twice as many vehicles per employee.
NoImmatureAdHom 3 minutes ago [-]
Neat info. I would guess that Toyota produces twice as many vehicles per employee at least in part because the regulatory and social environment where Toyota operates is better.
There is often an underlying sensible economic reason for doing things like destroying perfectly wearable shoes or burning edible crops. Understanding involves admitting things people don't want to admit to themselves.
Nike destroying shoes: the shoes they make are just cheap synthetics and foam, and the per-pair materials and manufacturing cost is a small part of the cost of the shoes. Nike is a marketing company that sorta does shoes. The shoes themselves aren't a very important part of the value they provide to people who buy their shoes. People who buy their shoes are buying a social signal about who they are and how much money they have that doesn't work if the shoes are too cheap.
gib444 21 minutes ago [-]
This is some top-tier bait
nieksand 3 hours ago [-]
It seems like this policy would lead to shortages in less common sizes of clothing.
altairprime 23 minutes ago [-]
Yes, this will likely exacerbate that further in the short-term: if retailers simply stop producing outlier sizes to reduce disposal of those sizes, then various niches will open up. In US women’s flats, very few go up to size 12+ (it’s already higher-cost to make products in outlier sizes and most don’t!) and so the one retailer (agaik) that offers that size has 100% market share, and keeps an inventory warehouse of unsold product that is listed until it sells at up to 80% discounts after a year-plus on the shelf. Another handful of retailers specialize exclusively in women’s clothing for people XL and above, which allows them to profit equally as well from less-common sizes.
My hope, however, is that this reduces overseas manufacturing in favor of domestic, which would allow retailers to dramatically reduce the shipping costs for small production batches, so that they’re able to simply produce more small batches of less-common sizes in response to demand. Sure, they might see a few percent lower profits per item, but they’ll be able to sell considerably more of their product simply by raising their supply to meet demand with finer granularity than the cheaper ‘produce an entire season one-time only and store it in a cargo container’ model offers today.
cbg0 21 minutes ago [-]
It can be made available online with a longer lead time if the manufacturers care enough about it. I guess it depends on whether the complexity is worth it, because if you're just selling cheap fast fashion then discounting/donating might still be worth it even if you produce excess, but more high-end brands probably won't stock uncommon sizes.
4ndrewl 3 hours ago [-]
The invisible hand of the market will rectify this of course. Nothing to see here.
mpyne 1 hours ago [-]
The invisible hand of the market has been handcuffed a bit here though. Though I imagine this will simply show up as higher cost rather than blanket inavailability.
altairprime 19 minutes ago [-]
If a charity sets up a ‘returned product classification’ flow and issues tax credits to companies donating their return flow to the charity, then companies can simply shunt returns to charity and lower their costs in triplicate: 1) changeover of return provider replaces expense with deduction; 2) compliance with EU regulations costs shipping to charity; 3) charity provides itemized receipts for compliance and further tax credits. Of course, companies won’t actually lower their prices to reflect the net reduction in costs, but it will certainly strip away the excuse that they must raise costs.
3 hours ago [-]
josephcsible 3 hours ago [-]
How do you figure?
flowerbreeze 3 hours ago [-]
It seems plausible. Less common sizes have a lower chance of being sold out, so if they can no longer be destroyed at the end and need to be further managed at lower quantities, it can become more cost effective to simply not make them. Whether it is true or not, I don't know.
palata 2 hours ago [-]
Hmm... say you estimate that you will sell 1000 items of "normal size", you stock 1000 items, and hope that you sell all of them. You end up selling 900, you have a remaining 10%.
No say you estimate that you will sell 10 items of "less common size", you stock 10 items, and hope that you sell all of them. You end up selling 9, you have a remaining 10%.
How does that make a difference?
flowerbreeze 1 hours ago [-]
It's more like if you find one mushroom in the forest, it doesn't make sense to bring it home, get the knife, clean it, get the pan, oil the pan, fry the mushroom, eat it, clean the knife, clean the pan, put things away. It's not worth the effort for just one mushroom. If there are many, a lot of these actions only need to be taken once.
jandrewrogers 2 hours ago [-]
There is no global definition of "less common size". It varies greatly from one locale to another. At the same time, production has relatively high fixed costs and is centralized.
It would be very expensive for the global factory to customize the distribution of sizes manufactured for a retail store in Des Moines, Iowa. The order is tiny and it would require customized logistics, all of which greatly increases cost and complexity.
ungreased0675 1 hours ago [-]
Companies should have extensive data on how many of what size they can expect to sell.
altairprime 12 minutes ago [-]
The missing factor in cheap-fast fashion here is warehousing costs. Companies are shredding shoes and landfilling clothing — and underproducing relative to what they could sell — rather than paying money to store products in a warehouse. One possible outcome the EU sellers can choose is to reinvest in product storage, so that they can raise their production targets to meet demand rather than to minimize product storage — at which point there is a vast demand for outlier sizes that is, today, unmet due to the unwillingness to store anything.
toast0 3 hours ago [-]
If your minimum run is 1000 of a size, and you can only really sell 500 because it's an uncommon size, and you would prefer to sell at full price or not at all, seems like making that size no longer fits your plans.
watermelon0 3 hours ago [-]
Wouldn't it be cheaper to only produce 500 items, instead of producing 1k, and throwing half of it away?
binaryturtle 2 hours ago [-]
Many years ago I worked in the printing industry. F.ex. a client wants 100 products of something (e.g. posters or flyers), usually it was more cost effective to produce a 1000 (or more) and then throw away 900 the client didn't need. Obviously a huge waste of material.
palata 2 hours ago [-]
Isn't that law exactly trying to avoid that kind of waste?
toast0 2 hours ago [-]
Yes. But in some cases the waste will be avoided by not doing a production run at all if the minimum production quantity is too high and the law prohibits destroying the unwanted product.
WalterBright 1 hours ago [-]
For printers, the cost is pretty much all in the setup. Printing 1000 copies costs about the same as printing 20.
SpicyLemonZest 3 hours ago [-]
1k in this example would be the minimum needed to make it worth the static cost of setting up and tearing down the production run.
thewebguyd 3 hours ago [-]
> prefer to sell at full price or not at all
That really only applies to luxury designer brands where selling at a discount can dilute the brand prestige, is Gucci, Versace, etc. really destroying unsold inventory at large volumes vs. standard retailers?
Stevvo 2 hours ago [-]
Yes. The law was motivated by reports of luxury retailers destroying their entire stock every year. Usual stores just discount stuff until it sells.
josephcsible 2 hours ago [-]
But clothes aren't perishable, so why would you only be able to sell 500, rather than it just taking twice as long to sell all 1000?
toast0 2 hours ago [-]
Fashionable clothes are perishable. "Nobody" wants to buy clothes from last season or last year.
Storing the clothes until they come back in fashion is expensive... and some materials really won't be useful after sitting for 10 years anyway. (Elastic bands really are perishable)
altairprime 2 minutes ago [-]
[delayed]
atrus 2 hours ago [-]
Because it won't take twice as long, but 10x as long. There's typically a large rush on a new design, followed by a slow tick in sales. Meanwhile you have to pay to warehouse it, pay tax on the inventory, etc.
jandrewrogers 3 hours ago [-]
Currently, unpopular sizes are over-produced because they are subsidized by popular sizes. If the unpopular sizes have to be paid for, the logistics and production processes would push producers to under-produce popular sizes.
A key insight is that what constitutes an "unpopular size" is a very local phenomenon. Every point of retail sells a different, semi-predictable distribution of sizes. It is much cheaper to ship sizes no one will buy than to manage the logistics of exactly matching local demand for a specific distribution of sizes.
I asked the same question to someone who works in this business and got an eye-opening detailed explanation that made it obvious in hindsight why things the work the way the do. The difference in product cost and logistics infrastructure was not small.
cm2012 3 hours ago [-]
Normally you can overproduce clothing and make three of every size or something, knowing that it only costs a couple bucks to make another shirt, for instance. And you can throw out if you make too many. If it's illegal to throw it out, maybe that raises the price from $2 to $4 because now you have to pay for storage for a long time. So you'll buy less inventory at the start, which usually means cutting less common sizes first
s1artibartfast 3 hours ago [-]
It's really different depending on if the manufacturer has Brand reputation or is just a replaceable good. For no name jeans, they probably just keep making them and donate the leftovers.
For a high-end designer dress, may be better to not manufacture large or small sizes that don't sell frequently.
Saline9515 4 hours ago [-]
It looks like a great opportunity for mafia networks to get paid by clothing brands in order to dispose of the stocks.
kps 2 hours ago [-]
Now I'm imagining someone dumped in the river chained to a pallet of t-shirts rather than a cinder block.
HelloUsername 16 minutes ago [-]
in order to dispose of the socks
palata 2 hours ago [-]
I mean at this point they may as well have a deal to let the mafia steal cars in the parking lot and share the benefits...
dash2 3 hours ago [-]
I don’t understand why they would ban this rather than charge for it. It seems very likely that destroying unsold clothes is sometimes the socially efficient thing to do, even after taking into account the environmental externalities.
bulder 3 hours ago [-]
Destroying unsold clothes is financially the most efficient thing to do. It remains unclear to me how taking actions to maintain higher markups on products would be socially efficient in any way. Companies of course can keep doing it, they just will face financial and legislative repercussions for it.
roysting 3 hours ago [-]
That was my initial thought too; just make it a non-deductible charge, ideally, payable from executive compensation.
Or they could also just levy higher taxes/fees on synthetic fibers and clothing that cannot be repaired (there are several reasons), and at the same time support the industry for natural, truly biodegradable fibers and their research?
This seems like more ivory tower navel gazing.
And that doesn’t even touch on all the jurisdictional and financial shenanigans that immediately come to my mind how you can circumvent that.
Government legislatures really should have red team groups that have to be included in legislative processes with the objective of punching holes into legislation.
cromka 3 hours ago [-]
Because it promotes recycling instead of being another tax.
tancop 4 hours ago [-]
some places already do this for food where anything thats after sell by date but still safe to eat has to be donated to a food bank.
i think it should be expanded to cover more categories than food and clothes when reuse and recycling infra grows to take the demand. its not just good for the environment it also prevents producers from restricting supply to keep their profits high.
the ultimate goal is make it illegal to destroy or intentionally damage anything usable before it reaches consumers. that would create a new ecosystem of discount stores and giveaway centers, and save everyone a ton of money.
jandrewrogers 3 hours ago [-]
Who pays for the logistics cost of moving and stocking these products in discount stores and giveaway centers? That is a large percentage of the total cost of production and the reason disposal is cheaper.
If those costs are paid for by taxpayers then the consumers are in effect involuntarily buying products they would not have otherwise bought, just with more steps. We already see this with agricultural subsidies.
If those costs are charged back to the producer then it becomes economically optimal to under-produce, which will cause prices to rise and risk shortages but eliminate waste. One can make the argument that higher prices for basic goods to reduce waste is a social good but it also impoverishes consumers.
All of these scenarios have happened empirically countless times. That almost every producer over-produces to some extent at no profit to themselves when allowed has strong "Chesterton's Fence" characteristics.
rzwitserloot 3 hours ago [-]
It's a somewhat blunt instrument used to internalize some externalities: Making a product and then destroying it is wasteful, and the market will fix all internalized costs of that waste, but some of those costs are externalized. Having society pay somewhat for producing clothes that are then worn, that's one thing. Having society pay for pointless waste is another.
What you've said is: Looking only at the internalized costs, pointless-wasting a percentage of clothes costs X but reduces clothes cost in the store by Y, with Y being larger than X.
Okay. Irrelevant - that math doesn't include externalized costs. It may well be that this is a stupid idea, but "market decided destroying some clothes was more efficient" doesn't prove anything unless you can show that the size of the externalized costs to this process are 0 or close enough to 0 to have no meaningful relevance.
loeg 2 hours ago [-]
You could internalize the cost of waste more generically by charging appropriately for landfill use and letting producers decide how much it's worth avoiding waste. Instead of just banning a particular waste stream by a particular industry, with distortive consequences.
rzwitserloot 39 minutes ago [-]
Yes, and that sounds like a better plan, but evidently that requires more political capital than is available.
SpicyLemonZest 3 hours ago [-]
Again, the waste is not pointless, it's part of an inventory management strategy to ensure adequate supply. If your local grocery store established a policy that they'll never buy more meat than they're sure they can sell before the expiration date, they'd routinely run out.
IneffablePigeon 2 hours ago [-]
The result of laws like this is not that the store will never buy too much, it’s that when they do buy too much they will give it away to somewhere it can be used instead of destroying it. It will not cost them much if any more to simply give things to food banks or charity shops.
loeg 2 hours ago [-]
It in fact does cost them more to give things than to destroy them.
rzwitserloot 37 minutes ago [-]
... and it costs society more to process the destroyed waste, and it costs society more to then deal with the fallout of shelters not having enough clothes.
Or not. Who knows. The point is, this 'economically it is more efficient' is not a proven case because the externalities need to be taken into account, and so far the person I've been responding to seems to not understand this part, or is ignoring it.
SpicyLemonZest 23 minutes ago [-]
I'm not sure everyone in the conversation is understanding each other. Saying the waste is pointless implies to me that it has no value, that companies could eliminate it with small costs and no other tradeoffs and they just don't want to bother. That's not accurate; a system with no oversupply is necessarily a system with fewer choices and more shortages.
The tradeoff may be worth it in some contexts, but if you don't understand that there are tradeoffs, you're going end up proposing silly policies like the original commenter's idea that nobody should ever be allowed to destroy any object a consumer could use.
SpicyLemonZest 2 hours ago [-]
It's not so easy to give things away at scale. If someone deposited 500 kilograms of assorted meat products outside your front door right now, with a note attached saying they need to be consumed or frozen in the next 24 hours or they'll go bad, how much work would it take for you to deal with that?
Clothing is of course a bit easier to deal with (it'll still grow mildew if you don't protect it from moisture!), but the source link explicitly anticipates there will be some circumstances where it's impossible to give away clothing and authorizes destruction in that case.
jyounker 3 hours ago [-]
Do you have proof of that assertion?
jandrewrogers 2 hours ago [-]
Happens all the time at my local butcher shop. They make a point of using the whole animal -- no waste -- but that means they are frequently out of the more popular products. For the most popular parts you sometimes have to reserve it a week in advance from a future animal.
herbst 3 hours ago [-]
> Who pays for the logistics cost of moving and stocking these products in discount stores and giveaway centers?
All the examples I know of (Austria, Switzerland) are social clubs/associations (whatever that is called) and DO NOT depend on tax payer money.
mc32 38 minutes ago [-]
Food4Less I think is owned by a larger grocery store brand. They sell near due date or past due date foods at a reduced price. There are also third party past due grocers in secondary cities.
s1artibartfast 3 hours ago [-]
It may be an incentive to produce less and restrict options available. It really depends on how much harm it does to the company to donate or mark down their product.
WalterBright 1 hours ago [-]
Wouldn't that drive textile manufacturing out of the EU?
petcat 1 hours ago [-]
I think that's the point. EU doesn't actually want these factories to operate in the EU. They just want to buy the clothes from elsewhere.
But then of course they cry a lot when they realize how easy it has become for China and USA to squeeze them.
Tough consequences of stuff like this.
skybrian 1 hours ago [-]
It sounds like charities will be getting a lot of unsalable clothing to go through. Maybe they could charge businesses for taking it?
It seems rather similar to what Ross Clothing does.
altairprime 60 minutes ago [-]
The EU is definitely studying the donations / tax-credit economy across its states; I expect that working group will be paying very close attention to donation outcomes union-wide in the coming months.
Is this a problem in the EU? I often think in terms of home remodels that a family might do at least once. Those can easily fill a dumpster with tons of garbage. That's much more waste than a family could ever generate directly or indirectly in clothing.
embedding-shape 4 hours ago [-]
> I often think in terms of home remodels that a family might do at least once
Very interesting point of view, as someone who never done a home remodel, it surely brought a new perspective for me.
> That's much more waste than a family could ever generate directly or indirectly in clothing.
I'm not sure, if you have two kids who are into trendy clothing and you're able to let them make choices around clothing, then I can imagine that there is quite high turnover on those things.
Besides, the proposed rules seems to try to address waste generated by businesses rather than individuals or families. I guess currently they throw outdated clothing in order to make space for the new clothing lines?
pcdevils 4 hours ago [-]
It's companies dumping unsold ranges of clothes as new ranges come in. Not people.
tialaramex 2 hours ago [-]
Ya, and this is hugely driven by "Fast Fashion". If you're a company which made raincoats since the 1880s and the style with more buttons and few zips starts to be less popular maybe you make fewer of those and more of the zip ones next season, and in five years you've gone from 90% button 10% zip to the reverse. Companies like that don't destroy a lot of stock. They do a few discount sales, end-of-line price slashes, that sort of thing, but this "destroy clothes to make money" wasn't a thing.
In fast fashion you're shipping a knock-off of the $8000 designer swimsuit seen in a Paris catwalk show at the start of July, a preview of your $150 version was shown in a TikTok video that blew up on Friday and your customers will be wearing them on the beach next weekend. By August that product is old news, you do not want that $150 product available for $5 in a discount store or your consumers might rebel - so you want to burn it instead and the EU says no, that's a perfectly good swimsuit, sell it to somebody who needs a swimsuit. Or give it away.
If "fast fashion" no longer makes economic sense now, too bad, I guess you won't do it any more. The EU's citizens do not want you to destroy the planet they live on just to get more money. We made money up. Stop being crazy.
Stromgren 4 hours ago [-]
My dad worked at a logistics facility, the amount of perfume he took home was ridiculous - and you’d think that something like perfume would never go stale. It does from a brand perspective and they do everything they can to have it destroyed so it doesn’t end up being sold to prices that would hurt the perceptive value. Obviously he wasn’t allowed to take it either.
hiAndrewQuinn 3 hours ago [-]
This isn't really surprising in a low margin industry. If you are making a 2% margin on the average perfume bottle, and then you liquidate it at -3% because it's cheaper than destroying it, you can accidentally end up anchoring customer perceptions on a price with like a -1% margin which actually will destroy the business over time.
High margin industries get more complicated to model, of course.
Stromgren 2 hours ago [-]
For sure high end perfumes are high margin products. Can’t be a lot of cost in producing a $100 perfume.
But I also feel like it’s a bit besides the point. Seeing pallet after pallet of perfumes getting destroyed every month should be an indication that something is not right.
phoronixrly 3 hours ago [-]
Perfume? Low-margin? Getting hits ranging between 50% and 85% depending on how luxury the brand is considered to be...
bigballsbjorn 3 hours ago [-]
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maccard 3 hours ago [-]
I did a remodel last year. I filled 2 largeskips by the end of it. This is the first large job this house has had in 10 years, and it’s a 130 year old house.
The cafe at the bottom of my street has roughly that amount of waste collected every 2 weeks - they fill their commercial trash bin every 2 days. I don’t know how much of that is waste vs old food but they generate orders of magnitude more waste than I do even when I’m making a huge mess.
Y-bar 2 hours ago [-]
One of my clients (a clothing brand) burns something in the range of 60-100 tonnes of clothes at the end of each season (4/year) here in the EU. They do it because it is easier and cheaper than to optimise the logistics chain. It is also cheaper than to recycle it. And they refuse to discount it or sell to secondary outlets to ”avoid brand dilution”.
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comrade1234 3 hours ago [-]
I lived in a small building along with a French family with 5 children. The amount of trash they had every week was incredible. We had our small trash bag and theirs would be a heap of bags chest high. I sometimes wondered if he was throwing out trash from his business too.
While living there the system changed from paying for a disposal service to pre-buying special bags that cost around 2.50chf per 35L bag. The French family moved back to France within a couple of months.
microtonal 3 hours ago [-]
Did they still have children wearing diapers? If so, that's your answer.
khurs 2 hours ago [-]
You didn't say where you live, and what kind of waste.
Is your separated into general/food/plastic/cardboard? As often it's the plastic bin that overflow if families are not cooking from ingredients but buying ready made food.
dash2 3 hours ago [-]
I think the children alone are enough of an explanation…
amarant 3 hours ago [-]
Is fast fashion not a thing in the US? I was under the impression it was, but perhaps I was wrong...
dgellow 3 hours ago [-]
It definitely is, according to my experience traveling to NYC
dgellow 3 hours ago [-]
The keyword is _unsold_. If you bought clothes, they aren’t unsold
ascorbic 4 hours ago [-]
This is about businesses, not families.
anonzzzies 3 hours ago [-]
I reuse everything from remodels. Seems a shame to throw out always. And other skips are getting bought by others to use in their building projects.
sokoloff 2 hours ago [-]
How do you reuse plaster or drywall walls/ceilings? I’m fairly reuse-friendly, but that stuff goes straight in the dumpster for practical reasons.
anonzzzies 20 minutes ago [-]
we fill anything that needs filling: the ground here is very uneven with massive rocks so you need to fill to even, you can empty containers of crap other people give away or pay a fortune.
dathinab 3 hours ago [-]
it's a pretty big _international_ problem
basically
- company cheap mass produces clothes/shoes
- new session (1/4 year) comes in (at beast)// it's fast fashion and there is a new trend (at worst)
- the "old" clothes are sold with rabatt but either before the session end or limited to clothes already shipped to stores
- this leaves a ton of clothes not shipped to physical shops and not sold in time
- selling them very strongly discounted means they compete with the new batch of different clothes, not discounting them means they might block up store space (physical store) or storage space (online shop, storage cost at scale shouldn't be underestimated, especially if some clothes just don't sell)
- so companies just destroy the unsold clothes _and write the production cost off as loss_. Turns out destroying + write off is more profitable then gifting or discounting... :(
- this is especially true for brand-clothes. They are often produced for a fraction of sales price and don't want to see their stuff being sold for more then a small discount. For some of this brand clothes their values outright lies more in "you needed to pay a bunch for it" then it "being high quality" (beyond a certain baseline of quality).
now the relevant question: Will this prevent companies from finding loopholes to still trash their clothes, especially brand clothes?
Yes it won't prevent it. But it increases the cost/complexity of it so it will likely reduce it by quite a bit. But some big next "<brand still dumps clothes through loophole>" scandal is basically just a question of time.
Still overall it looks like it will be beneficial from a wast, environment and climate POV while harming (way too) fast fashion which is good as fast fashion is harmful for all the previous points, laborer treatment, cloth quality and some others.
UltraSane 3 hours ago [-]
This law doesn't apply to individual consumers, only manufactures and retail stores.
cassianoleal 4 hours ago [-]
How long until they start shipping those abroad where they will become toxic bonfires?
mtrovo 3 hours ago [-]
You're half joking but this actually happens already. As you can imagine there's a lot of backlash on dumping good clothes on Europe itself so they export them in bad conditions just to have it burned out of sight.
And it's not just old clothes being discarded, another related study showed that around 30% of clothes returned from online stores are not even looked over to see if they're worth selling again and are discarded straight away.
But when does a product become waste? When the owner says it is.
wiz21c 4 hours ago [-]
At least they're trying.
thefourthchime 1 hours ago [-]
I'm pretty sure they're docking the ship right now.
wolvoleo 4 hours ago [-]
That can be penalised too.
We really have to get away from the idea that curtailing intentional industrial waste production is futile. Perhaps in American style capitalism it is because the system is rigged and the biggest money bag always wins. But we don't want this here at all.
We have to get forward as humanity and treat our planet with respect. Otherwise we won't have one worth living on. Making money isn't the only thing that counts.
graemep 4 hours ago [-]
I agree we should, but that does not mean that a particular regulation is the right way to do it. Its very hard to close loopholes and exploitation of exemptions.
ChrisLTD 4 hours ago [-]
You have to start somewhere, no? We have laws against stealing and murder and folks don’t usually go around saying they should be removed from the books because some people still steal and commit murder.
graemep 4 hours ago [-]
Yes, but those laws are pretty effective. They do deter murderers and thieves, and take them out of society so they cannot repeat their offences.
Ill thought out regulations can make things worse - I am convinced this is the case for the UK's Online Safety Act, for example. That (and the proposed ban on social media for under 16s) is also promoted on "we must do something" grounds.
I am very much in favour of some proposed changes under the law - e.g. improving repairability and reusability of some product categories.
I have doubts that some discouragement of destruction of new products fixes the big underlying problem with clothing: the production of cheap junk not designed to last. Under these regulations (at least as summarised in the article), they offer it to charity, charity rejects it, then they are free to destroy it.
ChrisLTD 2 hours ago [-]
Why would this law make things worse?
What would your proposal be for fixing what you’ve identified as the underlying problem?
dgellow 3 hours ago [-]
1. Come up with a regulation idea
2. do a bunch of studies to validate it
3. go through a pretty complicated, comprehensive, pretty long review process to debate and make it work within the existing regulatory system
4. eventually implement it
5. measure its impact
6. adapt or revoke according to the results
We are at the 4th step. Why would you assume your concerns haven’t been already taken in account in all the previous steps? It’s all public, you can look for the reasoning and justification
eastbound 2 hours ago [-]
Because we say this every time. Paper straws, anyone?
Leading a country through neutral scientific studies is the idea of “modernism”, a pipe dream from the 1960 implemented, for example, by Disney in EPCOT. We don’t live in modernist countries - perhaps post-modernist for some, but secular for 2/3rd of the world.
In Europe, our leaders have been unable to explain why we all know someone who was raped, bombed or killed with a machete in our close social circles. Countless crimes are being done by leaders who say “It is proven by science that these side-effects won’t happen.”
All your scientific studies mean nothing at the moment that legislators want to twist them to reach a solution.
sorokod 4 hours ago [-]
Naming and shaming is a reasonable first step.
amelius 4 hours ago [-]
We need judges that don't just look at the letter of the law. We can already use computers for that.
thesmtsolver2 3 hours ago [-]
Wasn’t it the US that caught European companies in the emissions scandal
Africa is going to be full of old Versaces, Balenciagas, Guccis and Valentinos.
nullorempty 2 hours ago [-]
They should really follow up with a similar policy on food.
At a nearby whole foods a large portion of produce goes to waste. It's heartbreaking to see.
OptionOfT 2 hours ago [-]
This is already the case in France since I believe 2016.
There's was uptick around this story 4 months ago, so I'm not sure if those were bots resurfacing it or whether something changed in the law.
TiredOfLife 2 hours ago [-]
1. There are no Whole Food in europe
2. Clothes don't go bad and poison people in general
amazingamazing 4 hours ago [-]
Why would this ever happen? Is it cheaper to destroy than sell at discount?
ascorbic 4 hours ago [-]
Yes, clothing companies and stores will very commonly destroy clothes if they determine that selling at a discount would undermine the brand value. They do things like cutting holes in the soles of shoes before discarding them.
thrance 4 hours ago [-]
> The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit- and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains. And the smell of rot fills the country. Burn coffee for fuel in the ships. Burn corn to keep warm, it makes a hot fire. Dump potatoes in the rivers and place guards along the banks to keep the hungry people from fishing them out. Slaughter the pigs and bury them, and let the putrescence drip down into the earth.
John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
embedding-shape 4 hours ago [-]
Some stuff you basically have to give away for people to buy, some stuff just isn't so attractive to most people. With limited store space, you could miss out on profits if you don't update what you have available. Every item you carry is another item you cannot fit to carry.
kryptiskt 4 hours ago [-]
I think this largely is about brand protection. They worry that discounting the clothes means they will just cannibalize sales of that brand's full-price clothes.
artisinal 4 hours ago [-]
If the full price is €6, there isn’t much room for a discount. Destroying and freeing up store space for something that does sell can easily be profitable.
cbg0 26 minutes ago [-]
Donating to charity is cheaper than destroying.
dgellow 3 hours ago [-]
Thats also the case for a lot of electronics, it’s not just a problem with clothes
thibaut_barrere 3 hours ago [-]
Artificial scarcity + the urge to impose fashion cycles, sadly
hawk_ 4 hours ago [-]
Selling cheaper cannibalizes next season's fashion.
close04 4 hours ago [-]
Particularly for “luxury” brands as selling at a discount devalues the brand. I use quotes because most of those brands sell cheap stuff (double digit manufacturing cost using forced labor [0]) but with a fancy logo making them worth 4 figures.
Luxury brands don't want the poors to be seen wearing their merchandise.
It hurts brand perception.
dgellow 3 hours ago [-]
That’s pretty outdated, luxury brands have been selling cheaper clothes since decades at this point. It’s not uncommon to see people without wealth wearing luxury branded clothes (though of course they are mass produced and aren’t the actual luxurious clothes, just a way to wear the brand name)
carlosjobim 3 hours ago [-]
What I admire the most about this is that already months before passing this law, all the members of the European Commission signed a document that they as individuals will not purchase any new or expensive clothes during their time in office, as an act of solidarity and to show they also take their individual responsibility to reduce waste.
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parisiansam 2 hours ago [-]
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aaron695 3 hours ago [-]
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iammjm 4 hours ago [-]
Great! “Fashion” is capitalism’s toxic way of having people discard perfectly good clothes and buy new ones every 12 months. It’s stupid, wasteful, and disgusting
josephcsible 3 hours ago [-]
This has nothing to do with consumers throwing away their old clothes. It's specifically about companies throwing away clothes that were never bought by consumers.
ezfe 37 minutes ago [-]
Which they do to maintain their fashion reputation and image. It absolutely is related.
UltraSane 3 hours ago [-]
It should be illegal for stores to throw away edible food.
cbg0 23 minutes ago [-]
There are actually laws in EU countries to prevent this. Supermarkets have to discount food that is soon to expire instead of throwing it away, perishables from restaurants and fast food joints can be taken home by employees at the end of the day, and even donations to charities of said goods, or farms for produce unfit for human consumption is encouraged/regulated.
charlieyu1 3 hours ago [-]
Makes it more expensive for everyone and also decentivize donating food to homeless or anyone in need.
UltraSane 3 hours ago [-]
how does NOT destroying edible food make food more expensive?
s1artibartfast 2 hours ago [-]
They have to deal with less sales and or storing excess inventory.
Let's say you have some bruised bananas. You either have to keep them on the shelf till they rot (less space for sellable product) or donate them and then people won't buy as many bananas, so you need to raise the price.
zb3 39 minutes ago [-]
Or.. lower the price?
IneffablePigeon 2 hours ago [-]
People eating donated bananas are not buying bananas if there are none available for free. They are just not eating bananas.
jandrewrogers 2 hours ago [-]
Unfortunately, there is an issue with food pantries where people who are not in need use them because free food. People can be shameless. It is a minority but still too common and doesn't come with the stigma it deserves in some places. In Seattle, I've even heard a few anecdotes of people trying to resell food from the food pantries.
This behavior does impact prices in the normal market at the margin, particularly if it becomes normalized.
s1artibartfast 2 hours ago [-]
Says who?
Would you prefer free bananas or paying?
UltraSane 51 minutes ago [-]
Supermarkets and stores throwing away edible food is pure waste and fundamentally immoral when people are going hungry.
s1artibartfast 28 minutes ago [-]
Why? the two are generally unrelated.
Lack of food isnt the bottleneck, there is no shortage.
It is usually a host of complex problems.
Is throwing away water in a rainforest immoral when there are thristy people in a desert? The problem is connecting the two.
khalic 2 hours ago [-]
Fiction, there are places that already do this without any of these fabled effects
roysting 3 hours ago [-]
So the corporation can just sell or donate them to their own shell entity in some tax preferred jurisdiction and then destroys them and take a loss that can be shuffled back to the corporation?
zkmon 3 hours ago [-]
Industrial production would far exceed the needs of people in the target markets. Supply chains are also highly streamlined. Some amazon boxes would go to dump unopened, after delivering to customer.
The state of perishable goods is much worse. A lot is dumped in food and short shelf-life items. Nothing can be done here. This is not even a brand issue.
Do not give license to industrial production or imports that far exceeds the needs of people in that region.
dgellow 3 hours ago [-]
> The state of perishable goods is much worse. A lot is dumped in food and short shelf-life items. Nothing can be done here.
That’s already regulated in multiple countries
zkmon 3 hours ago [-]
That's interesting. Mind telling how regulation would stop dumping of expired or unconsumed food and other stuff?
cbg0 17 minutes ago [-]
Supermarkets are forced to discount soon-to-expire items which go into "bargain bins".
So i buy from my own money fabrics, machines and also i pay handy people to make clothes out of it. I can not sell them all. My Risk. And as an additional punishment i lose the right to do whatever i want with my own property? Mad world.
psalaun 2 hours ago [-]
On a planet with infinite resources it may be a mad world. On one where oil will be depleted at some point and fast fashion brands are collectively creating thousands of disposable plastic clothes models in dozen of millions of nuits per month, it's common sense to limit the madness of this industry
loeg 2 hours ago [-]
Our planet has effectively infinite resources. We're probably past peak oil extraction and have plenty left, nevermind that the vast majority of clothes aren't made of plastic. This policy is dumb as hell.
tacomagick 2 hours ago [-]
So I buy my own factory and produce my own pollutants and I dont have the right to do whatever I want with them, mad world.
no-name-here 2 hours ago [-]
And per OP article:
1. This only applies to companies above a certain size.
2. Hundreds of thousands of tonnes of textiles are destroyed each year in the EU before use.
3. In Germany alone, companies destroy tens of millions of garments per year under just one of the existing justifications for destroying garments before use.
mistrial9 2 hours ago [-]
it is not the year 1800 any more, some things have changed
Rendered at 18:57:19 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
I wonder if anybody is keeping track of everything a mid size business needs to take care of. Each particular report probably sounds like a reasonable request, but by now they're probably well into hundreds, and they're all outside the actual scope of the business (e.g. it may seem manageable for the bureaucrats designing them, because that's what they deal with all day, but not for a small organization doing... something else).
In fact there was a study by an American law school that came to the conclusion that the US has more bureaucracy than many European countries…
Recommended read: https://www.andybudd.com/archives/2026/04/the-lazy-myth-that...
You only write a report if you want the exemption.
The hypothetical business you're imaging shouldn't be looking for an exemption.
The law's effect on small business is conceptually not too different from eg laws against dumping toxic sludge.
Small retailers that process returns by taking the item out of the envelope, studying it, and then putting it back up for sale (either at full or reduced price, depending on new or cosmetic defect) will be entirely unaffected because their production costs vastly exceed their return inspection costs and they’ve been recording ‘sellable’ vs ‘worn’ vs ‘cosmetic defect’ somewhere this whole time anyways (or else they’d collapse even without these regulations!), and medium businesses will likely find their profits temporarily reduced — but since they were disposing of sellable products to begin with, they can either sell them to recover profits, donate them to reduce taxes, or accept the fractional inspection charge against profits and continue as-is.
Some possibilities: Reduce production defects (slower production/qa times), return rate), Reduce size variability (slower production/qa times), Improve fabric quality (higher production costs, lower future sales), Provide more detailed sizing charts (higher sales cost, lower return rates), Provide more consistent sizing (eg. band size 85 is not 80-90cm between different models and different brands), Reduce production batch sizes (less waste, more shipping costs), Reduce overseas manufacturing (higher cost production, lower cost/time shipping), Sell entire batches until sold out (increased inventory costs, maintains brand wealth-image), Donate wearable clothing to charity (tax deductions, goodwill), Switch from overseas large-batch production to domestic JIT (reduces inventory of never-sold products to zero), and so on.
But for you to do your "small organization", shouldn't you be required to have to consider the environment around you?
A bar of course doesn't want to care about the noise the patrons do on the terrace for example, but because we live in the world with other people, they do have to care about this, even if it's "something else" than what they want to do.
Or data centers as another (maybe more contemporary) example, where sometimes they have things that needs to be disposed of in a certain way. Yes, the data center operators aren't in the business of "toxic waste management", but if you want to run a data center, you need to figure out how to deal with the byproducts.
I don't think clothing companies should somehow be magically excepted from having to care about others.
I think we've seen time and time again that self-regulation of the industry doesn't work and that businesses will gladly fuck over society if they can get away with it and make more money. Usually that behavior is even defended with saying "Well, it's not their responsibility to solve society's issues. They are there to make money."
Barring nationalization of an industry, heavy regulation and/or taxation/subsidizing are the only ways to reliably protect the interests of society. If some businesses get killed in the process, so be it.
Nike's unsold, defective, or returned shoes are ground up to make carpet padding. They're processed by the truckload in a large grinding machine.
It seems that under these rules, this would be illegal - ?
The law reduces wasted production inputs — materials, energy, and labor — as well as production outputs — wearable shoes, here. This directly regulates a practice by brands where they destroy wearable clothing rather than see their latest branded fashion worn by people who bought it at a discount or received it for free. This also directly regulates corporations from using grinders, melters, incinerators, landfills, and overseas ‘recycling’ (=landfills) to replace warehouses with retailers, accelerate product cycle times and derive FOMO sales benefits without the cost of reducing their batch sizes. The apparel industry is destroying something like one third of what it produces, so it’s certainly earned regulation of its ‘this shall not be sold’ decisions to its disfavor.
I would expect Nike in the EU market to either increase product prices and/or decrease release intervals until their inventory supply is lowered to meet demand while claiming that it’s the EU’s fault that their hottest shoes aren’t yet available, rather than maintaining their existing cycle times and quantities by donating their wearable, branded, wealth-signaling shoes to be worn by poor people. (Perhaps that’s already begun?)
As far as I can tell (although I'm no lawyer, sorry Nike), the point is to reduce waste and to increase recycled content in use. With these two main objectives, what Nike is doing seem to be fitting within that. It's not the "destruction" itself that is bad, but what you do with that after the destruction, recycling it doesn't create waste (or maybe, as much waste) as outright destroying+throwing all of it.
Down-cycling is a thing. Even aluminum and steel get down-cycled.
I have no sympathy for recycling fetishism.
> The concept of destruction as outlined in this Regulation should cover the last three activities on the waste hierarchy, namely recycling, other recovery and disposal. Preparation for reuse, including refurbishment and remanufacturing, should not be considered destruction. Preventing destruction will reduce the environmental impact of those products by reducing the generation of waste and by disincentivising overproduction.
Basically, does it end up as waste or does it end up being repurposed in some good way? If the former, we should find a way of getting rid of it, if it's the latter, it's A-OK!
1. Destruction is conversion of any usable product X to any non-X form (even if the new form is usable).
2. Destruction is prohibited (for large businesses, right now).
Usable is not perfectly defined and will be a judgment call, but one can construct a common sense set of ‘what is unusable?’ definitions that an inspector or judge would accept — so long as sellers have not explicitly caused such outcomes:
- Product lacks structural integrity (a loose thread doesn’t count, a missing sleeve does count)
- Product is contaminated (tried on and didn’t fit doesn’t count, motor oil stains does count)
- Product is unsafe (tried on and didn’t fit doesn’t count, underwear returned with safety liner removed may count, product has been worn for more than try-on period may count)
Note that, for example, the EU is likely to say ‘launder it first, then donate it’ for products that are worn and returned but can be safely donated after laundering; so they are specifically aware of some of the loopholes that corps will aim for first.
Downcycling is when you reuse something for a less refined purpose. For instance you can use contaminated plastics (im the sense of somewhat mixed types, bits and bobs of labels etc) to make humble park benches, but you won't be then reusing that low grade park bench plastic to make the Hubble space telescope with.
Still, downcycling into carpet is better than dumping the shoes on a coral atoll of course. Yet it's a step below recycling.
Though that will obviously incur a larger cost than today.
So some slightly damaged shirt, or a shirt returned and such, ends up sold by these secondary sellers as new. This is part of why people destroy clothes upon return, so that secondary sellers can't buy their own returned product at $1, and sell it making more than the original seller would have.
Not to mention, all returns I've been noticing, resold from Amazon, are heavily treated now with some sort of spray. I can only presume bedbugs were getting returned with used clothing...
I can't tell if this is coming from jealousy or incompetence—or perhaps a combination of both. They see the rest of the world, especially the United States and China, getting richer and more advanced, and their response seems to be to shield themselves from it instead of competing.
Volkswagen in Germany is going to lay off 100,000 jobs and shutter plants. Half of the EU is recklessly in debt. And Germany is supposed to be the good country with the good economy.
The EU is a $23 trillion economy, hardly a slouch even though it is underperforming.
The VW example is actually something you probably don't understand - they're failing because they're an inefficient business, not because of EU regulations or Germany not having a "good economy". Toyota produces almost twice as many vehicles per employee.
There is often an underlying sensible economic reason for doing things like destroying perfectly wearable shoes or burning edible crops. Understanding involves admitting things people don't want to admit to themselves.
Nike destroying shoes: the shoes they make are just cheap synthetics and foam, and the per-pair materials and manufacturing cost is a small part of the cost of the shoes. Nike is a marketing company that sorta does shoes. The shoes themselves aren't a very important part of the value they provide to people who buy their shoes. People who buy their shoes are buying a social signal about who they are and how much money they have that doesn't work if the shoes are too cheap.
My hope, however, is that this reduces overseas manufacturing in favor of domestic, which would allow retailers to dramatically reduce the shipping costs for small production batches, so that they’re able to simply produce more small batches of less-common sizes in response to demand. Sure, they might see a few percent lower profits per item, but they’ll be able to sell considerably more of their product simply by raising their supply to meet demand with finer granularity than the cheaper ‘produce an entire season one-time only and store it in a cargo container’ model offers today.
No say you estimate that you will sell 10 items of "less common size", you stock 10 items, and hope that you sell all of them. You end up selling 9, you have a remaining 10%.
How does that make a difference?
It would be very expensive for the global factory to customize the distribution of sizes manufactured for a retail store in Des Moines, Iowa. The order is tiny and it would require customized logistics, all of which greatly increases cost and complexity.
That really only applies to luxury designer brands where selling at a discount can dilute the brand prestige, is Gucci, Versace, etc. really destroying unsold inventory at large volumes vs. standard retailers?
Storing the clothes until they come back in fashion is expensive... and some materials really won't be useful after sitting for 10 years anyway. (Elastic bands really are perishable)
A key insight is that what constitutes an "unpopular size" is a very local phenomenon. Every point of retail sells a different, semi-predictable distribution of sizes. It is much cheaper to ship sizes no one will buy than to manage the logistics of exactly matching local demand for a specific distribution of sizes.
I asked the same question to someone who works in this business and got an eye-opening detailed explanation that made it obvious in hindsight why things the work the way the do. The difference in product cost and logistics infrastructure was not small.
For a high-end designer dress, may be better to not manufacture large or small sizes that don't sell frequently.
Or they could also just levy higher taxes/fees on synthetic fibers and clothing that cannot be repaired (there are several reasons), and at the same time support the industry for natural, truly biodegradable fibers and their research?
This seems like more ivory tower navel gazing.
And that doesn’t even touch on all the jurisdictional and financial shenanigans that immediately come to my mind how you can circumvent that.
Government legislatures really should have red team groups that have to be included in legislative processes with the objective of punching holes into legislation.
i think it should be expanded to cover more categories than food and clothes when reuse and recycling infra grows to take the demand. its not just good for the environment it also prevents producers from restricting supply to keep their profits high.
the ultimate goal is make it illegal to destroy or intentionally damage anything usable before it reaches consumers. that would create a new ecosystem of discount stores and giveaway centers, and save everyone a ton of money.
If those costs are paid for by taxpayers then the consumers are in effect involuntarily buying products they would not have otherwise bought, just with more steps. We already see this with agricultural subsidies.
If those costs are charged back to the producer then it becomes economically optimal to under-produce, which will cause prices to rise and risk shortages but eliminate waste. One can make the argument that higher prices for basic goods to reduce waste is a social good but it also impoverishes consumers.
All of these scenarios have happened empirically countless times. That almost every producer over-produces to some extent at no profit to themselves when allowed has strong "Chesterton's Fence" characteristics.
What you've said is: Looking only at the internalized costs, pointless-wasting a percentage of clothes costs X but reduces clothes cost in the store by Y, with Y being larger than X.
Okay. Irrelevant - that math doesn't include externalized costs. It may well be that this is a stupid idea, but "market decided destroying some clothes was more efficient" doesn't prove anything unless you can show that the size of the externalized costs to this process are 0 or close enough to 0 to have no meaningful relevance.
Or not. Who knows. The point is, this 'economically it is more efficient' is not a proven case because the externalities need to be taken into account, and so far the person I've been responding to seems to not understand this part, or is ignoring it.
The tradeoff may be worth it in some contexts, but if you don't understand that there are tradeoffs, you're going end up proposing silly policies like the original commenter's idea that nobody should ever be allowed to destroy any object a consumer could use.
Clothing is of course a bit easier to deal with (it'll still grow mildew if you don't protect it from moisture!), but the source link explicitly anticipates there will be some circumstances where it's impossible to give away clothing and authorizes destruction in that case.
All the examples I know of (Austria, Switzerland) are social clubs/associations (whatever that is called) and DO NOT depend on tax payer money.
But then of course they cry a lot when they realize how easy it has become for China and USA to squeeze them.
Tough consequences of stuff like this.
It seems rather similar to what Ross Clothing does.
Tax incentives for donations to social economy entities: Models, trends, and challenges (2025) https://social-economy-gateway.ec.europa.eu/document/downloa...
Very interesting point of view, as someone who never done a home remodel, it surely brought a new perspective for me.
> That's much more waste than a family could ever generate directly or indirectly in clothing.
I'm not sure, if you have two kids who are into trendy clothing and you're able to let them make choices around clothing, then I can imagine that there is quite high turnover on those things.
Besides, the proposed rules seems to try to address waste generated by businesses rather than individuals or families. I guess currently they throw outdated clothing in order to make space for the new clothing lines?
In fast fashion you're shipping a knock-off of the $8000 designer swimsuit seen in a Paris catwalk show at the start of July, a preview of your $150 version was shown in a TikTok video that blew up on Friday and your customers will be wearing them on the beach next weekend. By August that product is old news, you do not want that $150 product available for $5 in a discount store or your consumers might rebel - so you want to burn it instead and the EU says no, that's a perfectly good swimsuit, sell it to somebody who needs a swimsuit. Or give it away.
If "fast fashion" no longer makes economic sense now, too bad, I guess you won't do it any more. The EU's citizens do not want you to destroy the planet they live on just to get more money. We made money up. Stop being crazy.
High margin industries get more complicated to model, of course.
But I also feel like it’s a bit besides the point. Seeing pallet after pallet of perfumes getting destroyed every month should be an indication that something is not right.
The cafe at the bottom of my street has roughly that amount of waste collected every 2 weeks - they fill their commercial trash bin every 2 days. I don’t know how much of that is waste vs old food but they generate orders of magnitude more waste than I do even when I’m making a huge mess.
While living there the system changed from paying for a disposal service to pre-buying special bags that cost around 2.50chf per 35L bag. The French family moved back to France within a couple of months.
Is your separated into general/food/plastic/cardboard? As often it's the plastic bin that overflow if families are not cooking from ingredients but buying ready made food.
basically
- company cheap mass produces clothes/shoes
- new session (1/4 year) comes in (at beast)// it's fast fashion and there is a new trend (at worst)
- the "old" clothes are sold with rabatt but either before the session end or limited to clothes already shipped to stores
- this leaves a ton of clothes not shipped to physical shops and not sold in time
- selling them very strongly discounted means they compete with the new batch of different clothes, not discounting them means they might block up store space (physical store) or storage space (online shop, storage cost at scale shouldn't be underestimated, especially if some clothes just don't sell)
- so companies just destroy the unsold clothes _and write the production cost off as loss_. Turns out destroying + write off is more profitable then gifting or discounting... :(
- this is especially true for brand-clothes. They are often produced for a fraction of sales price and don't want to see their stuff being sold for more then a small discount. For some of this brand clothes their values outright lies more in "you needed to pay a bunch for it" then it "being high quality" (beyond a certain baseline of quality).
now the relevant question: Will this prevent companies from finding loopholes to still trash their clothes, especially brand clothes?
Yes it won't prevent it. But it increases the cost/complexity of it so it will likely reduce it by quite a bit. But some big next "<brand still dumps clothes through loophole>" scandal is basically just a question of time.
Still overall it looks like it will be beneficial from a wast, environment and climate POV while harming (way too) fast fashion which is good as fast fashion is harmful for all the previous points, laborer treatment, cloth quality and some others.
https://changingmarkets.org/report/trashion-the-stealth-expo...
And it's not just old clothes being discarded, another related study showed that around 30% of clothes returned from online stores are not even looked over to see if they're worth selling again and are discarded straight away.
https://environment.ec.europa.eu/topics/waste-and-recycling/...
We really have to get away from the idea that curtailing intentional industrial waste production is futile. Perhaps in American style capitalism it is because the system is rigged and the biggest money bag always wins. But we don't want this here at all.
We have to get forward as humanity and treat our planet with respect. Otherwise we won't have one worth living on. Making money isn't the only thing that counts.
Ill thought out regulations can make things worse - I am convinced this is the case for the UK's Online Safety Act, for example. That (and the proposed ban on social media for under 16s) is also promoted on "we must do something" grounds.
I am very much in favour of some proposed changes under the law - e.g. improving repairability and reusability of some product categories.
I have doubts that some discouragement of destruction of new products fixes the big underlying problem with clothing: the production of cheap junk not designed to last. Under these regulations (at least as summarised in the article), they offer it to charity, charity rejects it, then they are free to destroy it.
What would your proposal be for fixing what you’ve identified as the underlying problem?
2. do a bunch of studies to validate it
3. go through a pretty complicated, comprehensive, pretty long review process to debate and make it work within the existing regulatory system
4. eventually implement it
5. measure its impact
6. adapt or revoke according to the results
We are at the 4th step. Why would you assume your concerns haven’t been already taken in account in all the previous steps? It’s all public, you can look for the reasoning and justification
Leading a country through neutral scientific studies is the idea of “modernism”, a pipe dream from the 1960 implemented, for example, by Disney in EPCOT. We don’t live in modernist countries - perhaps post-modernist for some, but secular for 2/3rd of the world.
In Europe, our leaders have been unable to explain why we all know someone who was raped, bombed or killed with a machete in our close social circles. Countless crimes are being done by leaders who say “It is proven by science that these side-effects won’t happen.”
All your scientific studies mean nothing at the moment that legislators want to twist them to reach a solution.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal
At a nearby whole foods a large portion of produce goes to waste. It's heartbreaking to see.
There's was uptick around this story 4 months ago, so I'm not sure if those were bots resurfacing it or whether something changed in the law.
John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
[0] Better link: https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2025/jul/24/made-in-ital...
Yes.
It hurts brand perception.
Let's say you have some bruised bananas. You either have to keep them on the shelf till they rot (less space for sellable product) or donate them and then people won't buy as many bananas, so you need to raise the price.
This behavior does impact prices in the normal market at the margin, particularly if it becomes normalized.
Is throwing away water in a rainforest immoral when there are thristy people in a desert? The problem is connecting the two.
The state of perishable goods is much worse. A lot is dumped in food and short shelf-life items. Nothing can be done here. This is not even a brand issue.
Do not give license to industrial production or imports that far exceeds the needs of people in that region.
That’s already regulated in multiple countries
And the more recent non-food waste ban follow-up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Waste_and_Circular_Econom...
1. This only applies to companies above a certain size.
2. Hundreds of thousands of tonnes of textiles are destroyed each year in the EU before use.
3. In Germany alone, companies destroy tens of millions of garments per year under just one of the existing justifications for destroying garments before use.