As if companies are just out here wantonly destroying otherwise valuable goods that could have been easily sold at a profit instead.
I guarantee this problem is far more complex and troublesome than the bureaucrats would ever understand, much less believe, yet they have no problem piling on yet another needless regulatory burden.
“The regulatory burden on European companies is high and continues to grow, but the EU lacks a common methodology to assess it. The Commission has been working for years to reduce the "stock" and "flow" of regulation under the Better Regulation agenda. However, this effort has had limited impact so far. The stock of regulation remains large and new regulation in the EU is growing faster than in other comparable economies. While direct comparisons are obscured by different political and legal systems, around 3,500 pieces of legislation were enacted and around 2,000 resolutions were passed in the US at the federal level over the past three Congress mandate: (2019-2024). During the same period, around 13,000 acts were passed by the EU. Despite this increasing flow of regulation, the EU lacks a quantitative framework to analyse the costs and benefits of new laws.”
I'm wondering if this includes regulatory agencies which in the US operate under the executive
I would guess it's included but the wording (act, resolution) is very "legislative" coded
How about extending others some good faith?
These are political disagreements with decades (sometimes centuries) of history, and unless you're fifteen years old, there's a better explanation for the fact that others disagree with you than "I am the single smartest person in the universe, and all my political opinions are so irrefutably correct that anyone who disagrees must be doing so in bad faith and out of ignorance".
The vast majority of people want what's best for their societies, and have different views as to how best achieve that goal, that arise from diverse life experiences.
I'd personally disagree with that assessment. I think the vast majority of people want what's best for them and the cohorts they're in. Which is quite different from wanting what's best for society as a whole.
The better explanation is that they have acquired their political tastes mindlessly and are now defending them in an equal manner. The presumption of good faith is wasted on them.
> The vast majority of people want what's best for their societies, and have different views as to how best achieve that goal, that arise from diverse life experiences.
That's incorrect. Just take a look at the housing situation in the US: what's best for society is to build, but a majority of the people (the current owners) are blocking that because it suits them.
That's just assholery masquerading as enlightenment.
> That's incorrect. Just take a look at the housing situation in the US: what's best for society is to build, but a majority of the people (the current owners) are blocking that because it suits them.
Maybe if you call the majority stupid some more, that's famously convincing in a democracy. You'll definitely build sustainable coalitions for the policies you want this way.
Capital loves this kind of left wing politics. Off-putting and impotent.
Let's try to stay focused on the subject matter and leave personal jabs aside.
It's theirs to do with as they please. They paid for it to be made.
If you don't like how they run their business, don't buy the overpriced garbage they sell.
People seem to be so concerned about externalities like CO2 emissions, but it's difficult to believe this problem represents a scale even remotely meaningful in that area. It feels like the plastic straw bullshit that took over the US for a few years. A useless, symbolic gesture that causes far more harm than good.
As a side note, it's a weird feeling to jump to the defense of an industry I generally despise, but the regulation just seems so ludicrous.
This is not how that works. You have to pay for things within a legal framework setup by the government. If the legal frameworks changes then you have to deal with that.
If I pay for something to be made, that something belongs to me. It becomes private property and (at least in the US) I'm free to destroy a thing I own.
If you want to talk about options for protecting the environment, that seems great. There are ways to destroy textiles without fouling rivers or the air.
The OP article raises the spectre of "CO2 emissions" and "pollution" but doesn't provide any meaningful data (units or scale) related to these concerns.
My claim is that there is no way this activity represents any reasonable scale of impact relative to those separate concerns and that we already have lots of regulation related to keeping our water and air clear.
We can discuss ideas about how to do even better on those fronts, but this does not seem like a great way to have a large impact, if the environment is the actual concern.
How about all the laborers who were able to feed their families making these products that were destroyed? What happens to them when the company decides next year to be more conservative and make less stuff?
I'm not advocating for waste, I'm just pointing out that legislation like this often (almost always) comes along with unintended consequences that wind up causing more harm than good.
Only within the confines of the law. If I buy a skyscraper I can’t blow it up without permits. I can’t burn trash in my yard in the middle of the city. I can’t tear down a landmark in a historical district, even if I own it.
Instead, the legislators are making currently lawful behavior unlawful.
That’s what I find upsetting.
That's how progress happens. Welcome to the real world.
But the current incentives in the fashion market also has unintended consequences: companies producing a lot of garments only to destroy them to protect perceived intellectual property value.
And here's the thing: this brand image value is relative. So by forcing all companies to comply no one has to take the negative brand image hit that would be required to unilaterally decide to do this.
That's utterly incorrect. They don't just want profits - that would be easy to obtain by sending the merchandise to an outlet - they want high profits in a way that maintains high profits in the future too. Any discount "cheapens" the brand by giving customers the expectation of low(er) prices in the future.
> It's theirs to do with as they please.
Only within the bounds of the law.
I don’t presume to know anything about the fashion industry and generally find it uninteresting.
My point is that I assume the people running those businesses know what they’re doing. Many of them have been around for many decades.
I’m admittedly surprised to find so many people here with so much confidence in their own ability to effectively constrain an entire industry they obviously also know nothing about.
I agree, but their profit-seeking is myopic and there's no reason why it should be allowed.
They are...
Many brands prefer to burn their clothes than to send it to thrift shops or outlets for brand damage.
The EU is now putting your brand image a notch down compared to 'not wasting shit'.
It is not OK for anyone to litter, also not companies.
One can speculate that this is an easy way to force the companies to pay for their externalities - given that production in third countries are much harder to touch for the EU.
No they shouldn't. Sometimes it's not a matter of paying for the externalities. If you're doing harm at scale the only sane option is to stop doing that, period.
When we figured out that leaded gas was bad we didn't make companies pay for their negative externalities. We banned that shit and that was it.
I remember watching a documentary in which they tracked a package of coffee returned to amazon (unopened). It traveled through half of Europe to end up in an incinerator in Slovakia, which is funny because amazon doesn't even operate there.
Big companies are doing a lot of weird shit because at their scale if it's even 1ct cheaper to burn 10 coffee pods vs reprocessing them back in their store it's going to make a huge difference in the long run.
In TFA it's estimated that between 4% and 9% of clothing put on the EU market is destroyed before being worn. An admittedly high uncertainty, but even 4% of all clothing sold in the EU is still a heck of a lot of clothes.
Are you serious? Pricing theory includes both supply and demand, and limiting supply makes the remaining items more valuable by dint of rarity. Companies absolutely limit supply on items to maximize profits. How is this even a question?
if a manufacturer finds it too complex to not overproduce and not add all kinds of negative externalities then their business model is flawed or they’re not up to the task.
either way, it isn’t “the bureaucrats” fault they’re overproducing, and they absolutely are overproducing.
It's been known for ages that they operate like this. Some more ethical ones cut off the labels from the garment before they sell it in bulk. Most will destroy the items altogether.
This legislation targets this vanity and I applaud it.
I don't see anything shocking here. Corporations doing corporatey things, which is maximizing profits and that can easily literally mean destroying unconsumed stuff since it would cost them 2 cents more per tonne to ship it and sell someplace cheaper. Ever heard the term economies of scale for example? Those distort many things in money flows.
Those corporations don't give a fuck about mankind, environment, future, long term stuff etc. Any approach to similar topics which gives them benefit of the doubt is dangerously naive and misguided from the start. It's up to society to enforce rules if its healthy and strong enough. Some are better off, some worse.
They're not destroying clothing because it's inherently unsellable, or hazardous, or damaged beyond repair. They destroy it because it's easier to dump excess stuff than it is to set up responsible channels to get rid of it.
Many "high fashion" shithouses intentionally destroy excess stock so that their precious branded status symbols can't get into the hands of the filthy proles, which would dilute their brand recognition.
These "regulatory burdens", as you call them, are the only thing holding back companies from further messing up the planet and I welcome them with open arms.