So basically it costs less resources to throw them away, and instead we are legislating that people spend extra resources under the guise of reducing resources by not throwing things away.
Sounds backwards to me.
It reminds me of those recycling ideas where you are meant to mail the item somewhere, using more energy to do that, than it would cost to make the item from scratch in the first place. Great plan that.
Or people who drive 20 minutes to recycle glass.
Instead please have a care for the environment and just throw stuff away!
> Forcing a company not to throw away unsold merchandise simply raises the cost of getting rid of it above zero, so they have to seek better options.
In other words things will cost more? So basically these new laws have as a consequence higher prices, and extra resource consumption?
Someone didn't think things though........
They behave this way because it consumes less resources, by definition: if you spend less money, then you spend less resources (that's what money is for: to acquire resources).
> The solution is for them to make less.
Think about it - wouldn't they do this on their own? I mean it costs them money to make so much. If things are cheap, it's because they don't take much resources to make in the first place.
The regulation has a good goal, and a failed implementation - it actually going to result in more resource consumption, only those resources will be in shipping, handling, storage, etc.
Too cheap. And this raises the cost, not in materials but in overall lifecycle cost of producing an item. That's the point. The cost of overproduction is too low, by raising it, bad practices like "buy three and return two which we'll throw away" will no longer make financial sense. The excess shipping, storage, etc. won't happen because it won't be a viable business strategy.
If it's cheap to make it's because there's little environmental impact.
It's not a perfect one-to-one, but it's really close.
> practices like "buy three and return two which we'll throw away" will no longer make financial sense
But you are not changing consumer behavior! People will still buy things and return them, and those returned items are worthless, i.e. not sellable. The manufacturer can try to donate them, but no one will want them, or they will just store them forever in cheap warehouses that will burn down every once in a while, or suffer water damage.
Or perhaps you want there to be artificial shortages in stores, so there's just barely enough to buy because the store will be fearful of overbuying something they will have to keep on their shelf permanently?
Please, try to think of the results of your suggestions. You keep thinking only of your goals and not what will actually happen.
If throwing them away wasn't free, a lot of other interesting options would be more viable... like not shipping excess in the first place, discounting extras to an extreme level (shelf space is worth selling you a book for a quarter at some point), or giving them to charities.
With clothing returns, or Amazon returns in general, the issue is similar: It costs them more to actually check over the product for resale then to just chuck it in the trash. Waste is cheap because waste doesn't require any labor costs.
Forcing a company not to throw away unsold merchandise simply raises the cost of getting rid of it above zero, so they have to seek better options.