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Comment by randomtoast | Hacker News Reader

"So instead of destroying those clothes in Europe, we'll just add an unnecessary shipping step to the process, producing tons of unnecessary CO2."

> The world being as it is you're likely correct and your cynicism makes sense, but I'd like to think somehow you're wrong.

I don't see any cynicism here, only pure realism. The real question is why EU law tries to create a utopia on paper while ignoring real-world situations. That's what has always frustrated people in the EU about the institution: its lack of decisions that are close to the people and grounded in reality. Yes of course, everyone gets the idea and the good intentions behind it, but good intentions alone are not worth the paper that they are written on.

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For quite many years I saw EU as something mostly good. Since ten years back I'm hesitating. Enforcements when it comes to cars (like the (EU) 2018/858) where the manufacturers are forced to implement "safety" features that customers don't want/need and "environmental" features (such as AD blue) that makes worse products. Regulations that perhaps were good on paper, but that will backlash on manufacturers and consumers (as the cars since then became way more expensive).

Regulations on sorting out textile (such as worn underwear, textile diapers) created huge issues in Sweden to take care of the textile waste to a big surprise for the politicians..

I believe we (the citizens of EU) deserve better

I see this response as the exact same one about tax cheating and how the rich will just move away or be better at cheating taxes.

Did we forget how to discover and punish bad actors? Do you think we should just do nothing and let casual bad behavior go because some people are gonna be abusive? No. I refuse to accept that. It is not your false dichotomy.

If people abuse the system, fine and punish them. More than they profit off of the bad actions.

> Do you think we should just do nothing and let casual bad behavior go because some people are gonna be abusive? No. I refuse to accept that.

I'm with you, and I also give a clear: No.

My criticism is about how it is handled. If you introduce a new law and already know there is an immediate workaround that makes the situation even worse than before, then you should close that loophole in the first place. If you can't close the loophole because of strong resistance from lobbyists, then it's obvious this is just about "good intentions on paper" so the EU can say they've done something.

That extra step mean selling what remains at low cost might be more financially interesting than if they could destroy it 'on site'. Not a perfect solution, but it push the incentives in the right direction.

In fact, there is precedent for this kind of thing too.

Plastic used to be shipped to china and burned there, until china decided to stop accepting everyone else's trash

bad guys do bad things and will try to get around these laws.... so we shouldn't have laws and should just let bad guys be bad.

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