Donations would already be a great thing. This law makes it feasible in boardrooms to justify donations. Donations to shelters, developing countries and otherwise.
My wife worked for a cloth upcycling association (finding sustainable future for discarded clothes).
Reality is, there is just 10x more thrown out clothes in the west that any third world country on earth could need, same for shelters.
Associations distributing clothes to developing countries / shelters are filtering tightly what they accept.
In short, the vast majority of thrown out clothes in the west are just crapwear that not even the third world want. There are entire pipelines of filtering and sorting to only keep and distribute the good quality clothes.
That has already been happening for decades - and it isn't the "net benefit" most think it is - here is just one example - but there are dozens of similar articles that can be found:
That is a slightly different scenario than taking cheap "fast fashion waste", compressing it into bales, shoving it into shipping containers, transporting/dumping it and flooding local countries/markets.
(And many of these large shipments do not end-up as donations by the time they get to their destination, but are actually sold by weight and then resold again)
But yes - distribution/logistics of donated goods needed to those who need them should be a "solved problem", but unfortunately it is not - regulations could help. (In countries/regions where governments actually WANT to regulate and then subsequently FOLLOW the regulations rather than cancel, ignore or throw them out entirely... Pretty sure everyone knows which country I am referring too...)
Man it would really make my day if all the homeless people started walking around in Prada and Gucci. That would probably be just thing to kill off these brands for good.
How would we tell if the homeless started wearing Balenciaga though? Most of that trash already looks like it was lifted off the back of a homeless person (and one who is hard on his clothes)!
Some perspectives would say that they serve no real purpose other than performative wealth display and distribution. They appeal to everyone at fundamental psychological levels to "fit in" with a popular trend or "in group".
Their actual quality is often no better than other manufactured goods. It is their perceived quality and style that are the entire reason their brands exist.
(and... I can admit that certain "luxury brands" are definitely appealing to me personally, even if they make little "logical sense" to own - maybe not clothing so much, but... watches...)
Brand value particularly for commodity products is usually just a form of information asymmetry between consumers and suppliers, and creates economic inefficiency since it diverts expenditure from other products that can materially improve lives. It also allows enshittification to happen since it creates inertia (brand loyalty) to switching, and the positive brand image sticks around for longer than the actual good quality products.
OK. We were told creative destruction is good, if some companies exit the market and are replaced by others that offer better value then resources are being allocated more efficiently, no?
Any name brand would rather send their unsold clothes to a landfill in India rather than allow their wealthy customers to see poor people wearing the clothes.
It's very very easy to spend much less on clothes. Buying a new handbag every 6 months vs maintaining a bag for 20 years isn't that much different in terms of effort, but one is unbelievably more expensive.
Reality is, there is just 10x more thrown out clothes in the west that any third world country on earth could need, same for shelters.
Associations distributing clothes to developing countries / shelters are filtering tightly what they accept.
In short, the vast majority of thrown out clothes in the west are just crapwear that not even the third world want. There are entire pipelines of filtering and sorting to only keep and distribute the good quality clothes.