@conscious.app: This goes to show the problem was never just fast fashion, it's the entire fashion industry. A Hong Kong trial this summer exposed what luxury brand Chanel was doing with the handbags it couldn't sell, and it only came out because four warehouse workers tried to steal them. In February 2017, the workers boxed up 601 Chanel handbags and 123 wallets worth about 2.4 million dollars and got caught loading them into a van. But what got revealed was where they took them from. Every one of those bags was already marked for destruction by Chanel. They were brand new, unworn leftovers from the 2014 and 2015 collections, and instead of discounting, donating, or reselling them, Chanel's policy was to destroy them because a cheaper Chanel bag anywhere lowers the price of every other one. And those 724 were not the only ones. According to evidence in court, Chanel's Hong Kong operation was destroying 10,000 to 20,000 unsold products every six months to keep them off resale and protect its "exclusivity." In August the court sent all four workers to prison for four to seven years. And this isn't just Chanel. Burberry admitted in its own annual report it burned about 38 million dollars of unsold goods in one year, and journalists tracked new H&M clothes to an incinerator and brand new Nike shoes to a shredder, which both companies deny. The EU estimates 4 to 9 percent of unsold textiles in Europe are destroyed before anyone ever wears them, so since July 19 of this year, large companies there are banned from destroying unsold clothing, shoes, and accessories. If you want to ditch big fashion, the Conscious Spend app helps you find ethical alternatives, see how ethical a company is, who owns it, recent news, and much more.

Conscious Spend

Open In TikTok:

Region: US

Monday 09 November 2026 04:39:03 GMT