> In order for everyone to have clothes there needs to be an oversupply of clothes
Not sure why that would be the case.
For example, consider if everyone had as much clothes as they need. Then only occasional replacements would suffice, which is a quantity significantly less the total amount required if each person lacked sufficient clothing.
Or consider some regulation: 97% of stock must remain on the shelves and sell before new stock is brought in. That will certainly put a break on fast fashion.
It's the same reason why there has to be an oversupply of water for everyone to have water. We don't have any way to teleport items to exactly where they need to be when they're needed. Our logistics isn't infinite, and neither is our knowledge of where everything is. With so many humans who need clothes (that is every single one of us), it's not that surprising for 50 tons of clothes to end up in a wrong place, wrong time kind of situation.
Clothes aren't totally fungible, after all. I think burning food is much worse. I know the big burning pile look bad there... but how big is it really? The article says between 11k - 59k tons. I'll go with the high end and assume 50k metric tonnes. Assuming 150 grams per item (weight of a tshirt) that's 6666 items per tonne, which is about 333 million items in the pile. In the grand scheme of things, it's not that much. I think 5% oversupply is probably a floor for clothes. Any less than that and we're looking at shortages at retail. Say 5 billion humans each own 50 kilograms of clothing, which is ridiculously low balling it, that's 250 billion tons. And I'm not even talking about our shoe supply here! It must take tens of millions of tonnes of production each year to sustain that, and it's not like it gets instantly teleported to the consumer.
If whoever owned that pile could get even 50 cents per piece for them, they probably would rather have taken the money. I think burning is probably wrong though, better it be dumped in pits and left there as is in case one day an economical way to use the material emerges in the future. I get the feeling to reduce waste, I really do, but I don't like your idea of regulation on this. It'll only deprive the poorer among us of access. I'm willing to accept some waste so that people on a tight budget can dress themselves with style and feel good.
> For example, consider if everyone had as much clothes as they need. Then only occasional replacements would suffice
The challenge is that clothes rapidly progress beyond "need" into "wants". Being "fashionable" is very roughly a human constant. One of the very very first things that we industrialized was textile and clothing production, and then we continued to keep facing fashion and clothing churn.
I think it would very challenging to regulate clothing into a strict need.
But, again, it's not a choice between no fashion and ultra fast fashion (sell 10% of stock and throw away the rest). We can make clothes that are more durable, more customizable, we can have regulate how fast should fast fashion be, and, of course, regulate how waste should be treated.
Btw, I bet if you throw all that waste in a chemical reactor with a hydrogen source you can revert it back to hydrocarbons. I'm not a chemical engineer and I might be wrong, of course.
Not sure why that would be the case.
For example, consider if everyone had as much clothes as they need. Then only occasional replacements would suffice, which is a quantity significantly less the total amount required if each person lacked sufficient clothing.
Or consider some regulation: 97% of stock must remain on the shelves and sell before new stock is brought in. That will certainly put a break on fast fashion.
Also, define oversupply: +1%, 10%, 50%?