it's a pretty big _international_ problem

basically

- company cheap mass produces clothes/shoes

- new session (1/4 year) comes in (at beast)// it's fast fashion and there is a new trend (at worst)

- the "old" clothes are sold with rabatt but either before the session end or limited to clothes already shipped to stores

- this leaves a ton of clothes not shipped to physical shops and not sold in time

- selling them very strongly discounted means they compete with the new batch of different clothes, not discounting them means they might block up store space (physical store) or storage space (online shop, storage cost at scale shouldn't be underestimated, especially if some clothes just don't sell)

- so companies just destroy the unsold clothes _and write the production cost off as loss_. Turns out destroying + write off is more profitable then gifting or discounting... :(

- this is especially true for brand-clothes. They are often produced for a fraction of sales price and don't want to see their stuff being sold for more then a small discount. For some of this brand clothes their values outright lies more in "you needed to pay a bunch for it" then it "being high quality" (beyond a certain baseline of quality).

now the relevant question: Will this prevent companies from finding loopholes to still trash their clothes, especially brand clothes?

Yes it won't prevent it. But it increases the cost/complexity of it so it will likely reduce it by quite a bit. But some big next "<brand still dumps clothes through loophole>" scandal is basically just a question of time.

Still overall it looks like it will be beneficial from a wast, environment and climate POV while harming (way too) fast fashion which is good as fast fashion is harmful for all the previous points, laborer treatment, cloth quality and some others.

EU ban on destruction of unsold clothes and shoes enters into application