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French lawmakers vote to slow down fast fashion with penalties (www.france24.com)

submitted 3 months ago by CAVOK to c/[email protected]

21 comments fedilink hide all child comments

France’s parliament on Thursday backed a string of measures making low-cost fast fashion, especially from Chinese mass producers, less attractive to buyers.

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[–] [email protected] 29 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Good idea. I wonder if the implementation works correctly though:

A surcharge linked to fast fashion’s ecological footprint of five euros ($5.45) per item is planned from next year, rising to 10 euros by 2030. The charge cannot, however, exceed 50 percent of an item’s price tag.

So the 1€ shirt from Shein is going to cost 1.5€? That's not going to have much effect when sustainable shirts start around 15€.

I also guess Chinese marketplaces may still evade the law by hiding behind exaggerated shipping costs or maybe even splitting up into multiple entities with a lower release cadence. Afaics, people already buy clothing from sketchy, Tiktok-advertised Shopify sites.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I still don't understand how this would work - everything is staying the same production wise, workers are payed poorly, unsafe conditions, but the product will cost more? And then customers will pay more for their clothings and that will be used to push other, more sustainable manufacturers?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

That is my understanding as well, yes.

I think there's some rhyme and reason to it: France has limited insight into random manufacturing operations somewhere in Asia, so it can't directly regulate there. That's especially true if the clothing is sold by a Chinese platform as well which I don't expect to care much about the EU supply chain regulation either.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 3 months ago (2 children)

European countries may not be perfect, but they do seem to have working governments that produce legislation not 110% beholden to economic interest of corporations

[–] [email protected] 17 points 3 months ago (2 children)

that produce legislation not 110% beholden to economic interest of corporations

France has a massive Fashion industry with Bernard Arnault competing for the richest person on the planet position. But even a brand like Kenzo is far from being fash fashion (Just checked on Zalando, kids T-shirt at 100 EUR, no wonder why the owner is so rich) so it's not hindering the biggest French corpo.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago

I see... Always a dark side to all stories, eh?

I guess we can only hope that government get something right while they go on their normal business of being in corporation's pockets

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago

Bernard Arnault is lobbying against this law, because his companies make a lot of money in the Asian market, especially in China, and he fears repercussions from the Chinese government and a tariff war.

[+] nivenkos -6 points 3 months ago (1 children)

There's a lot of protectionism though.

Like this will drive higher inflation.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (3 children)

Inflation does not seem worse over there than in "free for all"© capitalism in the USA

PS: to be fair, USA is very protectionist as well, it's just they only protect the 1%

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

A tax like this will make the prices of some goods go up. Such price increases are measured as inflation.

This is a highly regressive tax. It's 50% on certain items below 5 EUR (soon 10) and less for items above that. Over the price, the rate goes down. For items at 50 EUR (100 EUR), it is only 10%.

Making cheap clothing in particular more expensive doesn't sound much like looking out for the 99%.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Well none of the measures to curve rampant consumism lead to cheaper prices

I was happy to hear the side of slowing down "fast fashion" because it is Hot garbage

But you are right, there are more aspects to this issue

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

Here is an alternative Piped link(s):

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

to be fair, USA is very protectionist as well,

I'm having good laugh watching Americans call everyone protectionism but passing a law to force foreign company to sell their social media to an US company.

[–] nivenkos 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I'm not American. And yeah it's a shame to see the US abandoning free markets and freedom.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

Did they ever have those?

[–] nivenkos 0 points 3 months ago

This is France protecting the 1%.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Ever since I misheard someone as saying that "fashion is going out of fashion" I keep waiting for it to happen.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

I bet my remaining testicle that they’ve been saying that since the dawn of fashion