Burberry burns bags, clothes and perfume worth millions

[Maple Leaf]

I find this practice of destroying good products appalling. #Burberry needs to find a solution to that benefits society and the environment. I don't buy this argument for a second that the way they burn products is environmentally friendly. What do you think?

Shared content:

Burberry burns bags, clothes and perfume worth millions The fashion firm destroyed £28m of unwanted stock last year in a bid to protect its brand. It takes the total value of goods it has destroyed over the past five years to more than £90m. Fashion firms including Burberry destroy unwanted items to prevent them being stolen or sold cheaply. Burberry said that the energy generated from burning its products was captured, making it environmentally friendly. Read full story

[Forever Winding Wool]

My first reaction is surprise.  I never knew companies did this.  After reading the article, I can see the reasoning behind this. 
 Part of me is surprised at the amount of stock wasted and wonders why they don't do a better job predicting the amount sold each year.  Scarcity makes the value rise, and I would think that if they did a better job of predicting the market, they could increase their profits even more.  But, what do I know?  I'm a stay at home wife who knits & sells the excess because I enjoy it. 

The other side of me sees this as being advantagous.
Burning the items and then claiming them to be "environmentally friendly" by recapturing the energy?  Eh...I can see it being environmentally friendly in that the items didn't get put in the landfills.  The incredible amount of clothing that people purchase and subsequently don't wear or wear one time and get rid of is astounding.  You can see that evidenced every time you go into Goodwill or Salvation Army.  When the floods happened in Lousiana several years ago, we went to help rebuild.  Clothing donations were so "generous" they laid in literal heaps and molded from the humidity.  I can only imagine this happens time and time again at relief efforts.  Hundreds of thousands of dollars of clothing are going into the landfills.  People that were doing relief work now refuse clothing items.

It is a shame that to protect their investment (brand), Burberry had to go to such extremes  I feel that the rich may have a different mentality about their clothing than I do, however.  I don't feel like I need to have "exclusive" clothes, nor would I feel like I was wearing cheaper clothing if I found out that they sold excess stock to TJ Maxx.

Just my $.02

[Maple Leaf]

It's this culture of wastefulness and excess that really bothers me. 
Those were new products. What kind of message does this send? Protecting brand is more important than helping those who can't afford their products? Burning things is not creative and it's not helping society. Why not do something good for others, something that doesn't involve profit? That would do a lot more for a brand.

@Forever-Winding-Wool, your story about "clothing donations" is sad too. I am sure there were people that really needed those clothes, but never got them.

Here is a good article about the problems with second-hand clothing. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/donated-clothing-where-it-ends-up-1.4662023
85% of clothing in North America is going directly in a landfill. Only 25% of clothing collected for thrift shops actually sells in the stores. A lot of it is now being shipped to the developing countries, which suppresses their struggling textile industries and ends up in their landfills.