Environmental campaigners are irate about upmarket British fashion label, Burberry, setting ablaze their personal bags, clothes and perfume worth millions of dollars, deeming it a ‘waste’.
“Despite their high prices, Burberry shows no respect for their own products and the hard work and natural resources that are used to made them,” said Lu Yen Roloff of Greenpeace.
Burberry recently destroyed unsold clothes, perfume and accessories worth $37.1 million last year to protect its brand.
Fashion firms like Burberry destruct unwanted items to stop them from being stolen or sold inexpensively.
“Burberry has careful processes in place to minimize the amount of excess stock we produce. On the occasions when disposal of products is necessary, we do so in a responsible manner and we continue to seek ways to reduce and revalue our waste,” a spokesperson for Burberry said.
“The growing amount of overstock points to overproduction, and instead of slowing down their production, they incinerate perfectly good clothes and products,” the Greenpeace rep continued.
“It’s a dirty secret of the fashion industry. Burberry is just the tip of the iceberg,” Roloff said.
Over the past several years, Burberry has been working very hard to make its brand exclusive once more after it went through a stage when counterfeiters were “sticking the Burberry check on anything they could”, said Maria Malone, principal lecturer on the fashion business at Manchester Metropolitan University.
Destroying undesired products is part of that process, she explained.
“The reason they are doing this is so that the market is not flooded with discounts. They don’t want Burberry products to get into the hands of anyone who can sell them at a discount and devalue the brand,” Malone said.
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