Clothing has a huge profit margin (when manufactured overseas) especially at the higher end (for brands which do not invest in local production, which is most, because it is also hard to beat Chinese quality). It's better for these brands to over-produce on some items and lose the low-cost inventory, than to under-produce and not meet market demand, to not offer a range of sizes and varieties to meet individual taste, and not achieve wide distribution that's necessary to grow market demand. That's why regulation is needed here.
> Assume the legislation is trying to reduce a real problem
Why assume that? Could you not imagine that legislation is often meant to signal values to voters as much or more than it is intended to solve real problems.
> Why assume that? Could you not imagine that legislation is often meant to signal values to voters as much or more than it is intended to solve real problems.
You mean something like, to signal to voters they're trying to solve a problem voters want changed? Or a problem voters say they have?
I didn't mean to imply it would fix the problem, or that the problem would be fixed. Just that there's desire for [thing targeted], is something enough people would want to change.
I also said "assume that" for the sake of the argument/discussion given you started by saying you didn't understand. I say it's trivial to understand if assume there are other incentives where destroying the product is desirable. Thus making the incentive you mentioned, not very strong, (in context).
EU regulations aren’t set by people who are directly elected though, so the incentives are really weird. It seems like largely a non-problem, the likes of which gets obsessed over by the types of also ran politicians who end up as members of the European Parliament or filtering into the Brussels bureaucracy.
maybe this will force factories to change their process. with manufacturing getting cheaper, smaller batches become affordable. at the extreme we can now print books on demand, and improved 3D printing allows one-off items in many more areas. that's the trend we need to push. to get away from wasteful mass production.
through demand at first. clothes designers are hopefully going to demand smaller batches to avoid getting punished for overproducing. but if that doesn't work, then yes, maybe regulation is necessary. tricky though because manufacturing is often outside of the EU.
overproduction needs to be made more uneconomical than smaller batches. if that is really the issue. i really doubt that large batches of production are actually the problem here.