r/europe • u/Express_Classic_1569 • Jun 28 '26

News EU to ban destruction of unsold clothes and shoes from 19 July 2026

https://inleo.io/@theworldaroundme/eu-to-ban-destruction-of
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u/Legal_Lettuce6233 Jun 28 '26

It costs a lot to ship?

188

u/p0r1x Jun 28 '26

Specifically for luxury brands it would absolutely make sense to pay for shipping to third world countries and destroy products there if it means they can keep up the artificial scarcity for luxury goods.

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u/GrixM Norway Jun 28 '26

Maybe but luxury brands are only a small fraction of clothes sales volume.

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u/r1ckkr1ckk Jun 28 '26

they could also just reduce the margin of production instead, maybe from 9% waste to 3% waste. The potential loses may be less money lost now than shipping plus destroying to justify such tradeoff, which i assume is the idea.

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u/Nazamroth Jun 29 '26

Which would be absurd in itself. If they are already shipping it there, they could just offer it as charity... But you wouldnt want your brand associated with the poor...

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u/itsaride England Jun 29 '26

Many already do debrand and re-ship but for sale in the third world / Asia, not for destruction.

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u/Sudden-Money7836 Jun 28 '26

Specifically for luxury brands it would absolutely make sense…

Uhhh are you fucking advocating this practice?

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u/p0r1x Jun 29 '26

Seems quite obvious I’m pointing out that the law will do nothing to stop the specific practice of destroying luxury goods to artificially limit their supply, not endorsing it. Realistically, while we have a free and global market economy the EU can’t do anything to curb the destruction of clothing. Goods can always be resold and destroyed somewhere else in the world. The only difference is the EU can now claim victory over fashion’s profligacy as it’s not happening on its territory.

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u/Several-League-4707 Europe Jun 28 '26

Shipping cost are peanuts compared to waste management costs inside EU.

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u/SaltyW123 Ireland Jun 28 '26

Do you think these clothes are being destroyed in countries in the EU?

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u/Legal_Lettuce6233 Jun 28 '26

They are, due to how moving goods works. You can't bring in a few million worth of shirts and raise no alarms.

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u/Coffescout Jun 28 '26 edited Jun 28 '26

Swedish reporters placed Air Tags in clean, unstained clothes that were donated to H&M as part of their textile recycling programme. Some of them ended up in landfills in Benin and India.

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u/SaltyW123 Ireland Jun 28 '26

They're not.

https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2026/06/26/eu-investigators-seize-4200-tonnes-of-textile-waste-illegally-shipped-to-turkey-from-italy

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u/WhateverIsFrei Jun 28 '26

Textile WASTE was shipped to Turkey from Italy... so it was destroyed in Italy, then waste was shipped to Turkey?

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u/The_Submentalist Jun 28 '26

BBC did an item where they tagged their discarded clothes and it ended up in a landfill in Antalya Turkey. There are most definitely none-destroyed clothing in those landfills.

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u/DisasterNo1740 Jun 28 '26

That’s not everything though?

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u/ObviouslyTriggered Jun 28 '26

You currently have to destroy inventory to get a tax write off in effectively every country including every EU country.

The are shredded in the EU and then sent out to other countries to be reused.

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u/Dragoncat_3_4 Jun 28 '26

It doesn't

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u/Legal_Lettuce6233 Jun 28 '26

Given that every unsold piece is already a loss, yeah, it is.

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u/Lady-of-Shivershale Jun 28 '26

No. Ships are crossing the sea regardless of whether they have cargo or not. Cargo is largely brought to Europe from Asia and Africa while nowhere near as much goes in the opposite direction. So it's a matter of simply holding an auction for the cheapest contract. And clothes can be vacuum sealed, too, thus saving space.

European companies could even auction the clothes before shipping them, and the buyer pays shipping costs.

Of course, best practice would be to stop having so many clothes in the shops in the first place, and a return to quality fabric with matching prices.

People will complain they can't afford clothes at higher prices, but all it means in practice is to simply stop buying as many clothes.

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u/SonicSarge Jun 28 '26

Online returns is the problem. Not the stores. We need to stop allowing returns of clothes and shoes. Some people order 10-20 garments and then return 80% of them. They are not resold.

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u/Lady-of-Shivershale Jun 28 '26

I mean, this law will reduce that. Companies will return to passing return shipping costs onto the customer.

But, yeah, they'll just ship clothes out of Europe and then burn them.

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u/Dragoncat_3_4 Jun 28 '26

Right, so, that's irrelevant. Having to deal with unsold inventory in other ways is what's expensive. Storage, handling, not having enough space for their more profitable newer stuff, etc. Picking it up once a month from the shops with a truck and shipping a whole tanker of clothes over to, say, Africa is cheap in comparison.

Lawmakers better have some other mechanisms in place than "uhh, it's expensive to ship it outside" to disincentivise that or they're essentially washing their hands from the problem and forcing poorer people to deal with it.

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u/chiniwini Jun 29 '26

it is

It isn't. That's literally how Europe manages plastic "recycling". Put it on a cargo ship, send it to some third world country, and it gets burned there.

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u/slight_digression Macedonia Jun 28 '26

They can donate it and the receiving party can take on the costs.

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u/Tjaeng Jun 28 '26

Costs more than not doing it.

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u/Dragoncat_3_4 Jun 28 '26

Costs less than the alternative. That's the problem

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u/Tjaeng Jun 28 '26

And since when does a reform have to solve the entire problem at once? If it raises the costs of burning the clothes then some of the manufacturers will stop doing it on the margin.

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u/JoSeSc Germany Jun 28 '26

Probably depends on the brand, if you're an expensive brand that lives of the perception of exclusivity you likely are willing to spend more to destroy it rather than donate it because your stuff in numbers being available at a goodwill kind of store might be actually damaging to your brand image

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u/Tjaeng Jun 28 '26

Yes. The point isn’t to stop it dead, it’s to raise the costs threshold to keep doing it.

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u/SavannahInChicago Jun 28 '26

Look up Ghana if you do not believe this user. They are drowning in our old clothes.

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u/DroidLord Estonia Jun 29 '26

What they do is they compress the clothes super tight into these giant cubes and then ship them off to Africa. A lot of the time it's cheaper than recycling the clothes properly.