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).
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.
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.
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.
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...
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!
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.
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.
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.
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)
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?
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...