An insight into how the law is made these days

From the Commons environment committee, telling us about the perils of fast fashion and clothes being cheap enough that even the factory girls can have a change of them:

“In the UK we buy more clothes per person than any other country in Europe. ‘Fast fashion’ means we overconsume and under use clothes. As a result, we get rid of over a million tonnes of clothes, with £140m worth going to landfill, every year.”

That’s from Mary Creagh and the correct response is “To whom?”

Those clothes being landfilled are worth £140 million to whom that is. They’re not worth £140 million to those who threw them away because they’ve just thrown them away - a fairly clear valuation of zero. They’re not worth £140 million to anyone else either as if they were then people would be collecting the clothes so as to gain that value. Outside government circles £140 million is still more than small change after all.

It’s the next bit that shows that not even Creagh thinks they’re worth that sum. For she calls on a tax to be spent in preventing such landfilling. Some reuse or something perhaps. But if we’ve got to use tax money to subsidise the reuse then the reuse isn’t worth the market price, is it? Even if that market price is nothing, entirely freebie.

All the information we’ve got tells us that these clothes going into landfill are worth nothing. So why should we be spending extra money to save that zero value? But sadly it appears that it’s Ms. Creagh who makes the law here, not you or I.