Say someone wanted to 'destroy' a sum of coins. He could for instance send them to the 1BitcoinEater address, basically no one would ever gain access to those coins(without the priv key), hence... he destroys that sum of coins.

Wouldn't sending those coins as a(possibly huge) fee be a better approach? That way, those coins get back to the miners and not sent into oblivion to a valid, but onowned, address.