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Here's how this law is actually going to work. Instead of destroying the unsold clothes in Europe, manufacturers are going to sell them to "resale" companies i

Here's how this law is actually going to work. Instead of destroying the unsold clothes in Europe, manufacturers are going to sell them to "resale" companies in countries with little respect for the rule of law, mostly in Africa or Asia. Those companies will then destroy those clothes, reporting them as sold to consumers. So instead of destroying those clothes in Europe, we'll just add an unnecessary shipping step to the process, producing tons of unnecessary CO2. The disclosure paperwork and the s/contracts/bribes/ needed to do this will also serve as a nice deterrent for anybody trying to compete with H&M.

pydry 8mo ago
>Those companies will then destroy those clothes, reporting them as sold to consumers. Until one of them gets the bright idea to resell the clothes, which should take all of 30 seconds. Your theory presumes the existence of a sketchy african company which will nonetheless remain scrupulously honest.
hnlmorg 8mo ago
Why wouldn’t these non-EU then just sell the goods in those countries? It would mean they turn a cost (destroying) into revenue (sales). It’s not like there isn’t already a massive industry selling counterfeit goods. So in your hypothetical scenario, if those companies are already shady then I could easily see them selling those surplus stock in the same shady markets.
- Sleaker 8mo ago
  Because the cost of doing business in those markets is probably more than what they could get for the product. And if they lower the price in that market, it might devalue the product line as whole and potentially causes brand damage.
  - hnlmorg 8mo ago
    The brand isn’t the one doing the business. It’s the 3rd party who we’ve already established is unscrupulous. So why should they care about the brand value?
cyclotron3k 8mo ago
This is a fantasy. No one is going to pay you to take your waste away and dispose of it. You would have to pay them. So now there's a strong financial incentive to a) not over produce, b) sell the clothes - even if it means selling them for next to nothing.
- deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
- eddythompson80 8mo ago
  lol, paying someone to "take your waste away and dispose of it" has been a stable of the "recycle" industry in western countries for 3 decades now. It took China putting on regulations on their side to disrupt that industry. Now you have to find other smaller economies to do that.
  - ryantgtg 8mo ago
    You appear to be agreeing with the person you’re replying to.
    - eddythompson80 8mo ago
      I'm not. Read their comment and mine. This was always, and will always be a thing. It's not a burden, just a marginal cost of business. Instead of paying a European company a €40k to destroy your broken products, you can pay an African one €10k to "recycle" your product. Best of all, you're legally forced to. I can see hundreds of companies lobbying for this because it completely takes them off the hook. "The law says we must do this. Please contact your representatives you dumb fucks"
      - bonzini 8mo ago
        The original comment says "sell them to «resale» companies". Selling goods means being paid for it, while you and the parent comment are both saying money goes in the opposite direction.
CivBase 8mo ago
Regardless of whether they respect the law, why would a business pay for goods just to destroy them? How does that make money? And if they're NOT destroying the goods but are instead using them, then the law is doing exactly what it is intended to.
- Qwertious 8mo ago
  It's about maintaining exclusivity - if you sell your $100 T-shirt for $50 instead of $100, then it's a $50 T-shirt now. Even if they always cost less than $10 to make. It's degenerate bullshit so I'm all for the EU banning it, but there is a business rationale.
  - CivBase 8mo ago
    I understand why a the original manufacturer might want to destroy their remaining stock to keep up an inflated perceived value. What I don't understand is why the business buying the remaining stock would want to do the same.
nkrisc 8mo ago
> manufacturers are going to sell them to "resale" companies in countries with little respect for the rule of law, mostly in Africa or Asia. Those companies will then destroy those clothes, reporting them as sold to consumers. Why wouldn’t they just turn around and resell the clothes? Surely these companies aren’t paying H&M for the privilege of destroying their surplus clothes, so by reselling them they’ll be getting paid to take the clothes and paid again when they resell them. Why would they ever destroy them? Which is why this scenario won’t ever happen.
- niels8472 8mo ago
  They would destroy clothing because it is not sold. This already happens to second hand clothing that is shipped to Africa. Part of it is sold, part of it is dumped. This is well documented.
  - seszett 8mo ago
    If part of it is sold, isn't it better than if it had all been destroyed? It's literally what that law is for.
    - tjwebbnorfolk 8mo ago
      Define what you mean by "better". Putting them on a giant CO2-burning ship to transport around the world to find every last person who wants a $1 shirt is much more harmful to the environment than just throwing it into a hole in the ground and making another one.
      - johnnyanmac 8mo ago
        The additional shipments aren't going to drastically go up over a few more companies throwing second hand clothing on ships. Large crate ships are relatively efficient for what they tow. As basic napkin math, if there's 1000 cargo ships moving in and out of the EU in a year, and this law adds 10 more. That's 1% increase. It's a bigger 1%, but I wouldn't be surprised if the emissions are less than the 9% of discarded clothes talked about in the article.
tsol 8mo ago
I thought you were going to go somewhere else with that. With excess clothing they'll unload it in Africa and Asia for cheap, weakening local clothes manufacturers. A bit of what happened with Tom's Shoes
exe34 8mo ago
I feel like you accidentally flipped a minus sign in your equations and then doubled down on your conclusions. Who would pay you to take something away and destroy it for you? It's fine to come up with creative solutions using an LLM, but you have to apply some critical thing before throwing your weight behind the conclusions!
- blharr 8mo ago
  What's stopping the price from being extremely low? Plenty might pay $1 to take a bundle of 1000 items of clothing, pick through it and find 20 items they like, then destroy the 980 other items.
  - CivBase 8mo ago
    Isn't that still better than it all getting destroyed? Also if someone is buying new goods for pennies on the dollar, I'd expect them to find some value in more than 2% of the stock.
    - blharr 8mo ago
      Except being destroyed locally in a controlled or regulated process and shipped to be destroyed overseas with more relaxed regulations are not equal footprint wise
  - exe34 8mo ago
    sounds like an improvement on the current system, no?
    - blharr 8mo ago
      980 items being shipped then destroyed versus 1000 items being destroyed. It's 980(x+y) instead of 1000(x) I have no knowledge of the tradeoffs, but I might also imagine that the method of destruction could be worse: incineration vs landfill vs thrown in the ocean, etc
catlikesshrimp 8mo ago
I live in a poor country. People here buy "American clothes" which importers get inside "pacas" (random bundles). Those clothes come USED from rich countries. My assumption is these clothes are dumped to someone to get rid of them, and then that person bundles them and ships them to poor countries. Once here, someone buys the bundles, sort the content according to their expected retail price and sells them to resellers. There is junk that can't be sold and is destroyed. Except in some cases, like in Chile, where they are just dumping the used junk "intact" in the desert. Prohibiting destroying new clothes is a net positive. There is market for clothes in poor countries, but it is already being exploited. Some clothes will always be dumped in poor countries, but not all of it can be resold. The manufacturers will make less clothes, there is no way around it.
mrighele 8mo ago
What is going to happen is that what is left of European manufacturers in the sector are going to move production and warehouses abroad, and from there they will move to EU only about what they need. They will continue to operate as they used to, the only difference being less business (and less jobs) being done in EU.
- riffraff 8mo ago
  cheap clothing is for the vast, vast majority not done in the EU, so this does not matter. But also, this regulation applies to the company _selling them to customers_, so it's completely irrelevant.
awesome_dude 8mo ago
Australia currently bans the sale of "recycling" plastic and e-waste to certain countries in South East Asia because of this problem (dumping to companies that have no qualms about throwing the waste into waterways etc) The waste is still making its way to those countries, and the way that we know is that NGOs are tracking it[0] I suspect that clothing will get similar treatment - initial illegal dumping as you predict, followed by determined NGOs holding the supply chain to account. [0] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-01-30/gps-in-e-waste-from-australia-reveal-exports-to-south-east-asia/106196324 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-01-30/gps-in-e-waste-from-a...
tw04 8mo ago
> Those companies will then destroy those clothes, reporting them as sold to consumers. This isn’t going to happen. But if it did, they would 100% sell them in local markets, not destroy them.
- swat535 8mo ago
  Yea, I'm not sure I understand how destroying the items would benefit these "resellers" ? What's in it for them?
  - t-3 8mo ago
    They don't have to pay to warehouse them or maintain a storefront. Space and people aren't free.
    - kdheiwns 8mo ago
      Have you been to a poor country? Say you'll sell a pile of clothes for a dollar. You'll have 100 people rushing in offering to buy it off you because they know they can resell it. And if it's brand name stuff, demand will be higher. That's something they could even sell to tourists. Warehouses aren't really necessary for clothes outside of rich countries where people can afford to just throw away literal tons of it.
ropable 8mo ago
Alternative story: they take these still-perfectly-functional finished products and find other markets for them. This isn't second-hand, damaged clothing, it's unsold new product.
_DeadFred_ 8mo ago
Wild how random, just getting by people can manage to recycle their motor oil and try to make better choices but businesses can only do the most shitty thing possible.
- cindyllm 8mo ago
  [dead]
hilbert42 8mo ago
"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. That EU regulators actually saw need for such regulations makes me both sad and annoyed because they ought not be necessary. What's wrong with clothing manufacture, commerce and trade, and fashion that brand-new clothing can be just trashed and destroyed? Right, we know it's a rhetorical question but we must continue to ask it. What's happening is sheer madness! If aliens were to witness this from a holistic perspective they'd arrive at conclusion the inhabitants of this planet are de-arranged. Why would any species take effort to gather resources/grow raw materials such as resource-hungry cotton then take time and more effort to manufacture it into useful products then move it holus-bolus to another part of the planet only to discard and destroy it unused—and harm the planet’s ecological systems in the process? That is unless they’re mad. In a nutshell, why not do something more useful and productive and less wasteful? What upsets me so much about this unnecessary waste is that when I was a kid clothes were expensive, my parents struggled to send us to school neat, tidy and well-dressed. When I ripped holes in the knees of my grey school pants through rough play rather than buy new ones necessity meant my mother would spend hours at the sewing machine mending them. What’s happening with these clothes is unnecessary waste and vandalism on a grand scale, and the fashion industry along with unethical marketing practices are largely responsible. People not only have too much disposable income but ‘fashion’ has convinced them their clothes are out of fashion almost from the moment they’ve bought them, these days, the notion of actually wearing one’s clothes until they’re worn out is almost inconceivable. Little wonder megatons of discarded barely-used and new clothes are polluting the planet.
- Nevermark 8mo ago
  > What upsets me so much about this unnecessary waste To the degree ethics (which I am using here to mean, accounting for negative externalities) are not incorporated into economics, with very few exceptions, every company will optimize their profits with no thought to externalities. Shareholders might care about waste as individuals, but are not coordinated in anyway that moves corporations. And any corporations that would like to be more ethical still have to compete with those that are not. Some with large margins can do that, but most cannot. Asking/convincing companies or individuals to be voluntarily ethical, one at a time, is not a solution. It is asking the wiser people to de-power themselves, in a way that just increases the opportunity, profits and incentives for less-altruistic actors. What the EU is doing is good. But I would like to see a consistent economic governance effort to avoid all significant negative externalities. Both the environment and the economy's value creation and net wealth, are better off without colossal destruction of value happening off the books. Dealing with each externality as if it were an isolated problem fritters away resources and time, and throws away the clarity and commonality that would allow consistent reforms to happen. We don't have that time to waste.
cik 8mo ago
This is already how it works today. If there demand curve shows an increase in desire for the same items in another jurisdiction, rather then make more and ship for <x> location, they are reshipped from your geography, even store to store. Secondly, disposal is one of two things: 1. Donation to a company that collects clothes, who in reality sell these clothes by the tonnage. Most of the clothing recyclers are companies of this nature. 2. Sale at a low value to the company above.
simianparrot 8mo ago
Same as when the EU puts a ton of restrictions on farmers within the EU countries -- Co2, fertiliser requirements, etc. -- making food so expensive to produce many go out of business and the remainder become practically luxury food, and then countries just end up having to import food from countries outside the EU _without_ those restrictions, simply offloading the environmental burden on "some other countries somewhere". It's a farse.
- ahartmetz 8mo ago
  Food is actually pretty cheap in the EU (in absolute prices compared to the US and relative to income compared to most other places), so I don't know what you mean.
  - simianparrot 8mo ago
    You're not contradicting me. Read it again.
- sehansen 8mo ago
  EU is a net food exporter and the only agricultural products the EU isn't self-sufficient in are animal feed, sugar, and tropical fruits & vegetables. So, no, EU farmers are struggling at the moment because they aren't as competitive on the global markets as they used to. Not because Europeans aren't buying their food anymore.
  - simianparrot 8mo ago
    Now why do you think they’re not competitive? Think about this more than one layer.
elil17 8mo ago
Why would they destroy the clothes instead of selling them to consumers? Developing countries already have huge markets for selling, altering, and repairing second-hand clothing that gets sent by thrift shops in developed countries. If anything this would be displacing lower quality used clothing (often graphic t-shirts) that currently makes up a large part of the textile markets in developing nations.
- lloeki 8mo ago
  Because at some point it becomes cheaper to ship and destroy than to store and sell. Inventory is "dead money" in accounting books! Money has been converted to Obtainium and Obtainium just sits there until it is converted back to (hopefully more) money, taking valuable space that could be filled with more Obtainium as soon as it goes away. At some point that Obtainium sitting there unsold just becomes un-space and destroying it becomes the cheapest move.
  - mobilemidget 8mo ago
    My hope for more reasonable pricing so they sell all units is then perhaps naive?
  - elil17 8mo ago
    But what about ship and sell? That's what I'm talking about. Storage is very cheap in developing countries.
- tjansen 8mo ago
  The kind of clothes we're talking about are not regular clothes. It's the unsellable kind. When H&M is doing a big sale, order the clothes by price, lowest price first. You will find stuff so hideous that they can't even sell it for four bucks. That's what I would expect most of the disposed clothing to look like.
  - elil17 8mo ago
    Then maybe this will make it more expensive for them to do that (which would be good because it's a bad thing to have been doing)
Cthulhu_ 8mo ago
This is also how plastic "recycling" goes. Stuff gets collected, sorted, baled up, and a checkmark for "this is recycled" is placed. Then it gets loaded onto a ship and exported and ends up in landfill or incinerated anyway. And every step in the chain gets a ton of money, ultimately from taxpayers. I'm sure some plastic gets recycled / reused. But as long as it's cheaper to just produce new plastics, the problem will remain. Recycling plastic is only viable for goodwill points and marketing (e.g. if people actively seek it out) and with government subsidies or rules.
athrowaway3z 8mo ago
Without knowing any details and thinking about this for just a min, i dont think this actually makes sense. Most of this stuff AFAIK is destroyed to keep brand value or as the cheapest solution to oversupply. Oversupply is less likely because it costs more, and the cost of removal now at minimum is the cost of a shipment. For actual good clothes, the company can now decide if they want to pay more to destroy it elsewhere in an attempt to hold brand value, or simply not put in a destruction clause in the sales contract before it is shipped off and maybe make a bit of profit.
ranguna 8mo ago
If this was the US, yeah I'd agree with you, but it's not. EU values the spirit of the law, which changes things drastically. Before anyone comments otherwise, please search online what spirit of the law is and how it's different from the US (I want to avoid fast answers here, enable your "thinking" functionality before answering).
NL807 8mo ago
>Those companies will then destroy those clothes, reporting them as sold to consumers. I think those companies might just actually sell them, and report to the company is being destroyed.
aurea 8mo ago
I'm no expert and don't know the full extent of what's already happening and what this ban would change, but I would say there is evidence that this is already happening. In a recent episode of Clive Myrie's African Adventure where he goes to Ghana, he "heads to one of the world’s biggest second-hand markets to meet the designers giving discarded clothes a second chance". They show a lady that bought a "crate" of random unsold clothes for around 500 USD, and she prays before opening it hoping it will contain clothes in good condition she can resell. The show claims that on a "good day" she can make something like 50 USD on such a crate. They also (very) briefly show a huge landfill of what appear to be discarded clothes. Keep in mind that this is only an entertainment show, so this is most likely only the tip of the iceberg. [1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002q72g https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002q72g
abiro 8mo ago
A lot of the apparel being destroyed is unsold inventory of up-market brands to protect their pricing power. If they shipped that to less affluent countries for destruction, it's unlikely that they'd be destroyed, because those items would fetch a good price on the black market.
gadders 8mo ago
Or they could sell them in Africa, driving local producers out of business
dangus 8mo ago
It seems like your view boils down to “why bother trying to regulate businesses when they’ll just be evil anyway?” Well, they’re guaranteed to be evil without regulations. Any flaws with the regulation can be worked out and adjusted in the future. These things are not set in stone forever.
heraldgeezer 8mo ago
H&M is great though, why the shade?
badgersnake 8mo ago
We should not have rules because bad people will break them absurd.
yunohn 8mo ago
> manufacturers are going to sell them to "resale" companies in countries with little respect for the rule of law, mostly in Africa or Asia Look, I fully agree with what is going to happen in reality. But isn't it a bit misleading and ironic to accuse the recipient countries as disrespecting the "rule of law", when the companies selling them there are fully/partially aware and doing business with them to bypass the exact (proposed) law being discussed? As with historic examples of waste management, recycling, etc as well, where everybody in the chain knew and wanted what was /actually/ happening.
waynesonfire 8mo ago
> Those companies will then destroy those clothes, I disagree. Suppose that this is even allowed, What's the incentive for these off-shore resale shops to destroy the items? Do they get paid per ton of ash produced? There is a stronger incentive to re-sell it, it'll create more economic value. I could care less if it's sold off-shore or within EU; as long as it's not being destroyed.
LargoLasskhyfv 8mo ago
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/chile-fashion-pollution https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/chile...
travisporter 8mo ago
Spitballing here, why not shred these clothes as filler for insulation instead of literally burning them? PFAS and fiber inconsistencies as these clothes are probably a hodgepodge of all sorts of chemicals, so they probably need to be characterized. I think chemical recycling is also being looked into.
- JoeAltmaier 8mo ago
  Modern insulation is likely several times more efficient (R-value) than shredded polyester and cotton.
dietr1ch 8mo ago
Even if this is how it goes, it's a good first step that just needs a follow up with sanctions and fines if they cheat on the spirit of the rule
wlecometo 8mo ago
> Instead of destroying the unsold clothes in Europe, they are already being sent to Chile or Ghana to be destroyed there.

pydry 8mo ago

>Those companies will then destroy those clothes, reporting them as sold to consumers. Until one of them gets the bright idea to resell the clothes, which should take all of 30 seconds. Your theory presumes the existence of a sketchy african company which will nonetheless remain scrupulously honest.

hnlmorg 8mo ago

Why wouldn’t these non-EU then just sell the goods in those countries? It would mean they turn a cost (destroying) into revenue (sales). It’s not like there isn’t already a massive industry selling counterfeit goods. So in your hypothetical scenario, if those companies are already shady then I could easily see them selling those surplus stock in the same shady markets.

Sleaker 8mo ago
Because the cost of doing business in those markets is probably more than what they could get for the product. And if they lower the price in that market, it might devalue the product line as whole and potentially causes brand damage.
- hnlmorg 8mo ago
  The brand isn’t the one doing the business. It’s the 3rd party who we’ve already established is unscrupulous. So why should they care about the brand value?

cyclotron3k 8mo ago

This is a fantasy. No one is going to pay you to take your waste away and dispose of it. You would have to pay them. So now there's a strong financial incentive to a) not over produce, b) sell the clothes - even if it means selling them for next to nothing.

deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]
eddythompson80 8mo ago
lol, paying someone to "take your waste away and dispose of it" has been a stable of the "recycle" industry in western countries for 3 decades now. It took China putting on regulations on their side to disrupt that industry. Now you have to find other smaller economies to do that.
- ryantgtg 8mo ago
  You appear to be agreeing with the person you’re replying to.
  - eddythompson80 8mo ago
    I'm not. Read their comment and mine. This was always, and will always be a thing. It's not a burden, just a marginal cost of business. Instead of paying a European company a €40k to destroy your broken products, you can pay an African one €10k to "recycle" your product. Best of all, you're legally forced to. I can see hundreds of companies lobbying for this because it completely takes them off the hook. "The law says we must do this. Please contact your representatives you dumb fucks"
    - bonzini 8mo ago
      The original comment says "sell them to «resale» companies". Selling goods means being paid for it, while you and the parent comment are both saying money goes in the opposite direction.

CivBase 8mo ago

Regardless of whether they respect the law, why would a business pay for goods just to destroy them? How does that make money? And if they're NOT destroying the goods but are instead using them, then the law is doing exactly what it is intended to.

Qwertious 8mo ago
It's about maintaining exclusivity - if you sell your $100 T-shirt for $50 instead of $100, then it's a $50 T-shirt now. Even if they always cost less than $10 to make. It's degenerate bullshit so I'm all for the EU banning it, but there is a business rationale.
- CivBase 8mo ago
  I understand why a the original manufacturer might want to destroy their remaining stock to keep up an inflated perceived value. What I don't understand is why the business buying the remaining stock would want to do the same.

nkrisc 8mo ago

> manufacturers are going to sell them to "resale" companies in countries with little respect for the rule of law, mostly in Africa or Asia. Those companies will then destroy those clothes, reporting them as sold to consumers. Why wouldn’t they just turn around and resell the clothes? Surely these companies aren’t paying H&M for the privilege of destroying their surplus clothes, so by reselling them they’ll be getting paid to take the clothes and paid again when they resell them. Why would they ever destroy them? Which is why this scenario won’t ever happen.

niels8472 8mo ago
They would destroy clothing because it is not sold. This already happens to second hand clothing that is shipped to Africa. Part of it is sold, part of it is dumped. This is well documented.
- seszett 8mo ago
  If part of it is sold, isn't it better than if it had all been destroyed? It's literally what that law is for.
  - tjwebbnorfolk 8mo ago
    Define what you mean by "better". Putting them on a giant CO2-burning ship to transport around the world to find every last person who wants a $1 shirt is much more harmful to the environment than just throwing it into a hole in the ground and making another one.
    - johnnyanmac 8mo ago
      The additional shipments aren't going to drastically go up over a few more companies throwing second hand clothing on ships. Large crate ships are relatively efficient for what they tow. As basic napkin math, if there's 1000 cargo ships moving in and out of the EU in a year, and this law adds 10 more. That's 1% increase. It's a bigger 1%, but I wouldn't be surprised if the emissions are less than the 9% of discarded clothes talked about in the article.

tsol 8mo ago

I thought you were going to go somewhere else with that. With excess clothing they'll unload it in Africa and Asia for cheap, weakening local clothes manufacturers. A bit of what happened with Tom's Shoes

exe34 8mo ago

I feel like you accidentally flipped a minus sign in your equations and then doubled down on your conclusions. Who would pay you to take something away and destroy it for you? It's fine to come up with creative solutions using an LLM, but you have to apply some critical thing before throwing your weight behind the conclusions!

blharr 8mo ago
What's stopping the price from being extremely low? Plenty might pay $1 to take a bundle of 1000 items of clothing, pick through it and find 20 items they like, then destroy the 980 other items.
- CivBase 8mo ago
  Isn't that still better than it all getting destroyed? Also if someone is buying new goods for pennies on the dollar, I'd expect them to find some value in more than 2% of the stock.
  - blharr 8mo ago
    Except being destroyed locally in a controlled or regulated process and shipped to be destroyed overseas with more relaxed regulations are not equal footprint wise
- exe34 8mo ago
  sounds like an improvement on the current system, no?
  - blharr 8mo ago
    980 items being shipped then destroyed versus 1000 items being destroyed. It's 980(x+y) instead of 1000(x) I have no knowledge of the tradeoffs, but I might also imagine that the method of destruction could be worse: incineration vs landfill vs thrown in the ocean, etc

catlikesshrimp 8mo ago

I live in a poor country. People here buy "American clothes" which importers get inside "pacas" (random bundles). Those clothes come USED from rich countries. My assumption is these clothes are dumped to someone to get rid of them, and then that person bundles them and ships them to poor countries. Once here, someone buys the bundles, sort the content according to their expected retail price and sells them to resellers. There is junk that can't be sold and is destroyed. Except in some cases, like in Chile, where they are just dumping the used junk "intact" in the desert. Prohibiting destroying new clothes is a net positive. There is market for clothes in poor countries, but it is already being exploited. Some clothes will always be dumped in poor countries, but not all of it can be resold. The manufacturers will make less clothes, there is no way around it.

mrighele 8mo ago

What is going to happen is that what is left of European manufacturers in the sector are going to move production and warehouses abroad, and from there they will move to EU only about what they need. They will continue to operate as they used to, the only difference being less business (and less jobs) being done in EU.

riffraff 8mo ago
cheap clothing is for the vast, vast majority not done in the EU, so this does not matter. But also, this regulation applies to the company _selling them to customers_, so it's completely irrelevant.

awesome_dude 8mo ago

Australia currently bans the sale of "recycling" plastic and e-waste to certain countries in South East Asia because of this problem (dumping to companies that have no qualms about throwing the waste into waterways etc) The waste is still making its way to those countries, and the way that we know is that NGOs are tracking it[0] I suspect that clothing will get similar treatment - initial illegal dumping as you predict, followed by determined NGOs holding the supply chain to account. [0] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-01-30/gps-in-e-waste-from-australia-reveal-exports-to-south-east-asia/106196324 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-01-30/gps-in-e-waste-from-a...

tw04 8mo ago

> Those companies will then destroy those clothes, reporting them as sold to consumers. This isn’t going to happen. But if it did, they would 100% sell them in local markets, not destroy them.

swat535 8mo ago
Yea, I'm not sure I understand how destroying the items would benefit these "resellers" ? What's in it for them?
- t-3 8mo ago
  They don't have to pay to warehouse them or maintain a storefront. Space and people aren't free.
  - kdheiwns 8mo ago
    Have you been to a poor country? Say you'll sell a pile of clothes for a dollar. You'll have 100 people rushing in offering to buy it off you because they know they can resell it. And if it's brand name stuff, demand will be higher. That's something they could even sell to tourists. Warehouses aren't really necessary for clothes outside of rich countries where people can afford to just throw away literal tons of it.

ropable 8mo ago

Alternative story: they take these still-perfectly-functional finished products and find other markets for them. This isn't second-hand, damaged clothing, it's unsold new product.

_DeadFred_ 8mo ago

Wild how random, just getting by people can manage to recycle their motor oil and try to make better choices but businesses can only do the most shitty thing possible.

cindyllm 8mo ago
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hilbert42 8mo ago

"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. That EU regulators actually saw need for such regulations makes me both sad and annoyed because they ought not be necessary. What's wrong with clothing manufacture, commerce and trade, and fashion that brand-new clothing can be just trashed and destroyed? Right, we know it's a rhetorical question but we must continue to ask it. What's happening is sheer madness! If aliens were to witness this from a holistic perspective they'd arrive at conclusion the inhabitants of this planet are de-arranged. Why would any species take effort to gather resources/grow raw materials such as resource-hungry cotton then take time and more effort to manufacture it into useful products then move it holus-bolus to another part of the planet only to discard and destroy it unused—and harm the planet’s ecological systems in the process? That is unless they’re mad. In a nutshell, why not do something more useful and productive and less wasteful? What upsets me so much about this unnecessary waste is that when I was a kid clothes were expensive, my parents struggled to send us to school neat, tidy and well-dressed. When I ripped holes in the knees of my grey school pants through rough play rather than buy new ones necessity meant my mother would spend hours at the sewing machine mending them. What’s happening with these clothes is unnecessary waste and vandalism on a grand scale, and the fashion industry along with unethical marketing practices are largely responsible. People not only have too much disposable income but ‘fashion’ has convinced them their clothes are out of fashion almost from the moment they’ve bought them, these days, the notion of actually wearing one’s clothes until they’re worn out is almost inconceivable. Little wonder megatons of discarded barely-used and new clothes are polluting the planet.

Nevermark 8mo ago
> What upsets me so much about this unnecessary waste To the degree ethics (which I am using here to mean, accounting for negative externalities) are not incorporated into economics, with very few exceptions, every company will optimize their profits with no thought to externalities. Shareholders might care about waste as individuals, but are not coordinated in anyway that moves corporations. And any corporations that would like to be more ethical still have to compete with those that are not. Some with large margins can do that, but most cannot. Asking/convincing companies or individuals to be voluntarily ethical, one at a time, is not a solution. It is asking the wiser people to de-power themselves, in a way that just increases the opportunity, profits and incentives for less-altruistic actors. What the EU is doing is good. But I would like to see a consistent economic governance effort to avoid all significant negative externalities. Both the environment and the economy's value creation and net wealth, are better off without colossal destruction of value happening off the books. Dealing with each externality as if it were an isolated problem fritters away resources and time, and throws away the clarity and commonality that would allow consistent reforms to happen. We don't have that time to waste.

cik 8mo ago

This is already how it works today. If there demand curve shows an increase in desire for the same items in another jurisdiction, rather then make more and ship for <x> location, they are reshipped from your geography, even store to store. Secondly, disposal is one of two things: 1. Donation to a company that collects clothes, who in reality sell these clothes by the tonnage. Most of the clothing recyclers are companies of this nature. 2. Sale at a low value to the company above.

simianparrot 8mo ago

Same as when the EU puts a ton of restrictions on farmers within the EU countries -- Co2, fertiliser requirements, etc. -- making food so expensive to produce many go out of business and the remainder become practically luxury food, and then countries just end up having to import food from countries outside the EU _without_ those restrictions, simply offloading the environmental burden on "some other countries somewhere". It's a farse.

ahartmetz 8mo ago
Food is actually pretty cheap in the EU (in absolute prices compared to the US and relative to income compared to most other places), so I don't know what you mean.
- simianparrot 8mo ago
  You're not contradicting me. Read it again.
sehansen 8mo ago
EU is a net food exporter and the only agricultural products the EU isn't self-sufficient in are animal feed, sugar, and tropical fruits & vegetables. So, no, EU farmers are struggling at the moment because they aren't as competitive on the global markets as they used to. Not because Europeans aren't buying their food anymore.
- simianparrot 8mo ago
  Now why do you think they’re not competitive? Think about this more than one layer.

elil17 8mo ago

Why would they destroy the clothes instead of selling them to consumers? Developing countries already have huge markets for selling, altering, and repairing second-hand clothing that gets sent by thrift shops in developed countries. If anything this would be displacing lower quality used clothing (often graphic t-shirts) that currently makes up a large part of the textile markets in developing nations.

lloeki 8mo ago
Because at some point it becomes cheaper to ship and destroy than to store and sell. Inventory is "dead money" in accounting books! Money has been converted to Obtainium and Obtainium just sits there until it is converted back to (hopefully more) money, taking valuable space that could be filled with more Obtainium as soon as it goes away. At some point that Obtainium sitting there unsold just becomes un-space and destroying it becomes the cheapest move.
- mobilemidget 8mo ago
  My hope for more reasonable pricing so they sell all units is then perhaps naive?
- elil17 8mo ago
  But what about ship and sell? That's what I'm talking about. Storage is very cheap in developing countries.
tjansen 8mo ago
The kind of clothes we're talking about are not regular clothes. It's the unsellable kind. When H&M is doing a big sale, order the clothes by price, lowest price first. You will find stuff so hideous that they can't even sell it for four bucks. That's what I would expect most of the disposed clothing to look like.
- elil17 8mo ago
  Then maybe this will make it more expensive for them to do that (which would be good because it's a bad thing to have been doing)

Cthulhu_ 8mo ago

This is also how plastic "recycling" goes. Stuff gets collected, sorted, baled up, and a checkmark for "this is recycled" is placed. Then it gets loaded onto a ship and exported and ends up in landfill or incinerated anyway. And every step in the chain gets a ton of money, ultimately from taxpayers. I'm sure some plastic gets recycled / reused. But as long as it's cheaper to just produce new plastics, the problem will remain. Recycling plastic is only viable for goodwill points and marketing (e.g. if people actively seek it out) and with government subsidies or rules.

athrowaway3z 8mo ago

Without knowing any details and thinking about this for just a min, i dont think this actually makes sense. Most of this stuff AFAIK is destroyed to keep brand value or as the cheapest solution to oversupply. Oversupply is less likely because it costs more, and the cost of removal now at minimum is the cost of a shipment. For actual good clothes, the company can now decide if they want to pay more to destroy it elsewhere in an attempt to hold brand value, or simply not put in a destruction clause in the sales contract before it is shipped off and maybe make a bit of profit.

ranguna 8mo ago

If this was the US, yeah I'd agree with you, but it's not. EU values the spirit of the law, which changes things drastically. Before anyone comments otherwise, please search online what spirit of the law is and how it's different from the US (I want to avoid fast answers here, enable your "thinking" functionality before answering).

NL807 8mo ago

>Those companies will then destroy those clothes, reporting them as sold to consumers. I think those companies might just actually sell them, and report to the company is being destroyed.

aurea 8mo ago

I'm no expert and don't know the full extent of what's already happening and what this ban would change, but I would say there is evidence that this is already happening. In a recent episode of Clive Myrie's African Adventure where he goes to Ghana, he "heads to one of the world’s biggest second-hand markets to meet the designers giving discarded clothes a second chance". They show a lady that bought a "crate" of random unsold clothes for around 500 USD, and she prays before opening it hoping it will contain clothes in good condition she can resell. The show claims that on a "good day" she can make something like 50 USD on such a crate. They also (very) briefly show a huge landfill of what appear to be discarded clothes. Keep in mind that this is only an entertainment show, so this is most likely only the tip of the iceberg. [1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002q72g https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002q72g

abiro 8mo ago

A lot of the apparel being destroyed is unsold inventory of up-market brands to protect their pricing power. If they shipped that to less affluent countries for destruction, it's unlikely that they'd be destroyed, because those items would fetch a good price on the black market.

gadders 8mo ago

Or they could sell them in Africa, driving local producers out of business

dangus 8mo ago

It seems like your view boils down to “why bother trying to regulate businesses when they’ll just be evil anyway?” Well, they’re guaranteed to be evil without regulations. Any flaws with the regulation can be worked out and adjusted in the future. These things are not set in stone forever.

heraldgeezer 8mo ago

H&M is great though, why the shade?

badgersnake 8mo ago

We should not have rules because bad people will break them absurd.

yunohn 8mo ago

> manufacturers are going to sell them to "resale" companies in countries with little respect for the rule of law, mostly in Africa or Asia Look, I fully agree with what is going to happen in reality. But isn't it a bit misleading and ironic to accuse the recipient countries as disrespecting the "rule of law", when the companies selling them there are fully/partially aware and doing business with them to bypass the exact (proposed) law being discussed? As with historic examples of waste management, recycling, etc as well, where everybody in the chain knew and wanted what was /actually/ happening.

waynesonfire 8mo ago

> Those companies will then destroy those clothes, I disagree. Suppose that this is even allowed, What's the incentive for these off-shore resale shops to destroy the items? Do they get paid per ton of ash produced? There is a stronger incentive to re-sell it, it'll create more economic value. I could care less if it's sold off-shore or within EU; as long as it's not being destroyed.

LargoLasskhyfv 8mo ago

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/chile-fashion-pollution https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/chile...

travisporter 8mo ago

Spitballing here, why not shred these clothes as filler for insulation instead of literally burning them? PFAS and fiber inconsistencies as these clothes are probably a hodgepodge of all sorts of chemicals, so they probably need to be characterized. I think chemical recycling is also being looked into.

JoeAltmaier 8mo ago
Modern insulation is likely several times more efficient (R-value) than shredded polyester and cotton.

dietr1ch 8mo ago

Even if this is how it goes, it's a good first step that just needs a follow up with sanctions and fines if they cheat on the spirit of the rule

wlecometo 8mo ago

> Instead of destroying the unsold clothes in Europe, they are already being sent to Chile or Ghana to be destroyed there.