alt Hacker NewsYes, but those laws are pretty effective. They do deter murderers and thieves, and take them out of society so they cannot repeat their offences.
Ill thought out regulations can make things worse - I am convinced this is the case for the UK's Online Safety Act, for example. That (and the proposed ban on social media for under 16s) is also promoted on "we must do something" grounds.
I am very much in favour of some proposed changes under the law - e.g. improving repairability and reusability of some product categories.
I have doubts that some discouragement of destruction of new products fixes the big underlying problem with clothing: the production of cheap junk not designed to last. Under these regulations (at least as summarised in the article), they offer it to charity, charity rejects it, then they are free to destroy it.
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Why would this law make things worse?
What would your proposal be for fixing what you’ve identified as the underlying problem?
>Yes, but those laws are pretty effective. They do deter murderers and thieves
This is really not true at all for violent crimes. Acts of violence are not really done by rational actors, same with many crimes. The death penalty / life in prison does not deter someone who has already decided that violence is an acceptable response to situations, and the story is similar with non-violent crimes; deterrence isn't really considered when someone has already made the decision to steal or do drugs. Deterrence doesn't change the conditions that contribute to those sorts of crimes; the law is more about restoring society as best it can, and in many countries it's about retribution / revenge more than anything.
With corporations, the conditions that lead to the undesired behavior is economical, and addressing the undesired behavior through economic methods seems appropriate -- if it's no longer economical to perform the undesired behavior, the company has to decide where they want to eat the cost.
In the case of the EU ban from the article, I suppose some companies may make the decision to pack up and leave, but my experience is many in the EU would be pretty okay with this with regards to clothing. There is a lot of interest in EU regarding sustainable, made in EU clothing and reusability, etc.
So if the goal is just to reduce clothing product waste in EU, losing fast-fashion companies and some luxury brands that most of the population won't / can't buy anyways probably isn't going to be such a big deal.