Instead of discarding stock, companies are encouraged to manage their stock more effectively, handle returns, and explore alternatives such as resale, remanufacturing, donations, or reuse.
The ban on destruction of unsold apparel, clothing accessories and footwear and the derogations will apply to large companies from 19 July 2026. Medium-sized companies are expected to follow in 2030. The rules on disclosure under the ESPR already apply to large companies and will also apply to medium-sized companies in 2030.
Why is the EU the best government in the world?
best
*least worst.
Yeah that’s what I said.
Common sense, really…
Where’s the economist with the free market nonsense?
Somewhere in the USA, why?
This will definitely give the knockoffs a boost. But fuck these wasteful companies that destroy excess just to pump up their prices from scarcity.
I don’t know if it’s necessarily that malicious.
Just … if your store ordered a lot of a certain clothing item, assuming it would sell well, but then it didn’t sell well, what do you do with it? If you leave it on the store shelves, it’s taking up valuable retail space that could be better utilized for displaying and selling something people actually want. Storing it in some back room isn’t going to work well – that will build up over time and you’ll end up having a whole warehouse of unwanted clothing.
Option 1: The right thing to do would be to put those items on sale/discount until they do sell. All the way down to free if you have to. But some stores think that would ‘cheapen their brand’, and most stores don’t want you to buy something at a steep discount if it means you’ll no longer buy a similar item for full price.
Option 2: You could send the unsold stock off to a discount/outlet retailer and let them sell it at a discount … if you even have such a company anywhere around. Or you donate it to some charity for a tax writeoff. But then there’s the expense of actually getting it there.
Option 3: You could send unsold stock back to the manufacturer … but that would be expensive shipping and the manufacturer usually doesn’t want it back, which is why nobody does this.
Option 4: You destroy it and/or just toss it in the dumpster out back. Cheap, fast, and easy.
Hopefully, making Option 4 illegal will make Options 1 and 2 more appealing.
you donate it to some charity for a tax writeoff. But then there’s the expense of actually getting it there.
Working for a food retailer I can tell you that charities are more than happy to collect. So, no transport cost isn’t a real argument.
Process is, Store doesn’t sell > sends back to distribution centre using the lorry that delivered new stock so lorry isn’t running empty > charity arranes collection from distribution centre.
It’s so very kind of you to imagine good will behind their motives. I am very sorry to inform you that is incorrect, they very much don’t want their clothes available in charities or even discounted, because it cheapens their brand overall. It’s malicious, as all capitalism, inherently, is. They don’t want “poor” people wearing their brands. They would rather take a loss, than sell the item at discount, they very much have infrastructure available to afford other avenues, they choose not to, because scarcity invokes a higher price on their product. Plus the status of high prices, keeps a ratio of higher price per product, which means a higher profit margin per product, the item probably costs them 5c to make, they sell it for hundreds, what they most want is to protect that margin, if their last season stock were available at half price, anywhere, people en masse would just buy last seasons stock. Destroying it, even though they make a massive loss by doing that, protects their future profits.
Here’s an idea. Instead of having artificial scarcity, they could have actual scarcity. Don’t manufacture 10 000 super fancy shirts. Make only 500. They will run out sooner than anyone wants, you’ll still make absurd profits and customers are left wanting more. When the next season rolls around, you make 500 of the same shirt, but in a different color. Charge 2x more than last time, but you’ll be able to sell them anyway now that people know how fast they disappeared last time.
Side note: Making stuff to feed the vanity of millionaires is revolting, but at least this way it doesn’t have to be so wasteful.
So now they’ll dump it in a warehouse somewhere and raise prices to pay rent on that warehouse like all good scam recycling companies do.
And they’ll tell the EU that they’re waiting for an opportunity to sell it but that hasn’t arisen yet. And thus, by and large, they won’t change how they operate.
The key is that you still dump it in that warehouse but then when that warehouse is full you do actually sell it to a shell company who isn’t going to bother with oversight and they ignore it until it catches fire or is otherwise destroyed or somehow become someone else’s burden, then they collect the insurance money… maybe with more shenanigans, but problem is solved.
Companies do it with dangerous chemicals that are burdensome to dispose of all the time.
Won’t the companies doing it create another company outside EU and then sell all their extra stock to them for €1, and then let them destroy it? There is no law you have to sell at a certain price.
Seems like a good idea, but I can’t imagine it will work.
Currently, a lot of the discarding is done by individual shops/resellers. I know of a few instances where basically all customer returns and unsold merchandise was slashed at the orders of the manufacturer to make them unusable, and then thrown in the bin.
If that is made illegal and everything would have to be returned, stored, processed and then sent somewhere else anyway, the chance that it’s going to end up with destruction greatly diminishes - opening that outlet section/shop or selling them to a local outlet company suddenly makes a lot more finacial sense.
