IN our 21st century world in which three billion people exist on less than £2 per day and in which more than a billion children live in poverty, it appears somewhat morally bankrupt of Burberry to have destroyed more than £105 million of unwanted stock over the last five years ("Burberry destroys £28m of clothes and cosmetics to tackle counterfeiters", Herald Business, July 20).
We are assured that the goods were destroyed in an environmentally friendly manner but that they were not waste goods but simply surplus to requirement.
The reasons for this wanton spoliation appear to be to protect its upmarket brand status (they don't want Burberry goods worn by the wrong people) or to guard against counterfeiters. Neither reason can surely justify such profligate and unscrupulous behaviour by the company, though I' m assured that its actions are not unique to Burberry within the fashion industry.
I understand that there is nothing new in Burberry's actions here nor is this needless squandering of goods distinctive to the fashion industry in our comparatively affluent Western economies.
However, Burberry's plutocratic form of ethics reminds me of John Steinbeck's novel The Grapes of Wrath and his comments which followed the description of the starving people being confronted by farmers burning fruit and potatoes to keep the prices of these goods up during the depression in the America of the 1930s: "There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolise. There is a failure here that topples all our success."
Owen Kelly,
8 Dunvegan Drive, Stirling.
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