France mulls ban on destruction of unsold luxury goods
20/05/2019
Speaking in the Danish capital, she said: “Too many companies feel OK with just throwing away or destroying the shoes or the clothing that haven’t been sold. You can’t do this anymore.”
Among the luxury brands to have been found to be destroying unwanted stock is Burberry, who in 2018 pledged to stop this practice with immediate effect after revealing in its annual report that it had destroyed finished products worth £28.6 million.
Another speaker in Copenhagen was Kering CEO, François-Henri Pinault, who said of this issue: “The fact that this is how we’ve always done it doesn’t mean we should continue.”
Mr Pinault also explained that French President Emmanuel Macron had charged him with leading the global fashion industry’s drive towards sustainability, something which he hopes to achieve by creating a “coalition” of influential industry figures. Among the areas the Kering chief mentioned were eliminating disposable plastics and converting to renewable energy sources.
He called for the industry to collaborate more to address these important issues, saying: “All of the major actors are working on these issues. The problem is that doing everything separately we don’t have the impact that we should.”
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