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Amazon destroying millions of items of unsold stock in one of its UK warehouses every year
- Thread starter Kaeden
- Start date
I understand Amazon sucks but this isn't exclusive to them. Most companies do this shit and it would probably be something similar if they had similar volume.
Those are tags and only Mods can give them. You can try reaching out to one of them.
The point with the rest of these posts is this is NOT exclusive to Amazon. I'd say a majority of big businesses do it, both retail and food places.
That quote is supposed to refer to the entire system, not just a corner of it. If we're producing more stuff than we can sell, we're consuming resources wastefully which isn't efficient.
That's what I assumed! What a waste.
I wish I sold it on eBay instead of return it to Amazon.
Also, I mean we have people knocking each other over for bargains and pokemon cards, queues for hours outside a new Primark. Imagine the scenes at the free designer donation point/charity shops once social media got wind of when it was due to happen. Same with the other goods. People won't pay full price for older models, then they won't pay discount prices, then the manufacturers want you to only push the newer models and the older ones just take up space.
They should probably just sell them at like 10-20% of their original price, but the stores decide it's not worth the effort. It's awfully sad.
I suspect most everyone who has worked retail has some experience with this
When I worked at Borders we used to rip the covers off the paperback books before we threw them in the dumpster
When I worked at Borders we used to rip the covers off the paperback books before we threw them in the dumpster
I remember learning about what those disclaimers meant in the front of some books, warning on buying "ripped books". Rip the cover, send that back for the publisher to give you back the cost of the book, and throw out the main book. At GS my manager was reluctant, but let me keep a handful of game guides with unripped covers. Such a waste of a book :(
Ughhhh unnecessary waste like this just annoys me...
Straight up, at blockbuster back in the day aka 2006, once we got as much as we could from a certain movie that we would have dozens of copies of and didn't have the space for them in the "for sale" section we would run all the overstock through this disc scratcher contraption that destroyed the side the laser would read and just toss them in the trash and blockbuster would not have to worry about someone digging in the trash to resell. I thought it was nuts.
It's likely not common but there's a few places that (used to) at least try to help with this. Even if it wasn't company policy, someone went through the effort to make some kind of change.
I was homeless in Denver around 2008. Some of the Starbucks' would bag the pastries they were throwing out separate from everything else and leave it beside the dumpster instead of in it. That's how I ate some days.
Now, at HEB, a grocery chain in Texas, they will discount a lot of their meat a few days before the sell-by date. I frequently get meat for 25-75% that's still good for 2-3 days when I buy, much longer if I freeze it.
I agree that this a huge issue in general though.
I was homeless in Denver around 2008. Some of the Starbucks' would bag the pastries they were throwing out separate from everything else and leave it beside the dumpster instead of in it. That's how I ate some days.
Now, at HEB, a grocery chain in Texas, they will discount a lot of their meat a few days before the sell-by date. I frequently get meat for 25-75% that's still good for 2-3 days when I buy, much longer if I freeze it.
I agree that this a huge issue in general though.
This is exactly why it's done. Taxes are paid on everything in inventory. So, the logic is to get rid of anything not selling to avoid paying those taxes. They then, in turn, get a tax right off for loss which I think (don't quote me on this) is a larger tax write off than giving it to charity.
Back when I was younger I seen more than one member of staff actively dismissed from their jobs because they ate perfectly good stock (bakery goods, fruit, veg) that was already wrote off and just going to be binned.
It was noted as theft and constitutes gross misconduct. Like this happened multiple times.
It was maddening, I don't even want to know what things are like at major distribution hubs.
This is mostly third party stock fulfilled by amazon - after a certain amount of time, long time storage fees means its more cost effective to bin the items. Also the biggest problem is also this -
Step 1 - Create a system where the customer can return items free of charge if unfit for purpose / not as advertised etc.
Step 2 - Charge for returns of items simply not wanted anymore or if you changed your mind
Step 3 - Everyone lies on returns - brand new, unused items are called "faulty", "not adequate" so they avoid paying a return fee
Step 4 - Amazon puts those brand new, perfectly good items in the trash
Step 1 - Create a system where the customer can return items free of charge if unfit for purpose / not as advertised etc.
Step 2 - Charge for returns of items simply not wanted anymore or if you changed your mind
Step 3 - Everyone lies on returns - brand new, unused items are called "faulty", "not adequate" so they avoid paying a return fee
Step 4 - Amazon puts those brand new, perfectly good items in the trash
Worked at Macy's for a couple years and we threw away sooooo much shit. Missing a single fork in a 62 piece dinnerware set? Try to sell it at 10% off, won't sell so toss it. Missing one plate in a fine China set? Toss it all. A small rip in a single pillow case from a set? Toss it. It was absolutely insane.
Lot more pressure to reduce waste in my supermarket in the UK at least. Any item where the packaging is a bit broken but the food itself is fine used to get disposed of but is kept aside now. Most stuff gets collected by the local food bank, including stuff that goes out of date on the day. It's still bad at Christmas though. Loads of stuff gets chucked from the 23rd onwards with the store being closed on Christmas Day and no one wanting to buy food with a date for the 24th.
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Terrified of lawsuits. To give you an idea, if someone buys a food item and walks out the door with it into the parking lot, changes their mind and gets a return, that item cant be returned to the shelf, it has to be trashed. Once it leaves the store for any reason, its got to be trashed without exception due to corporate policy handed down to every store location.
For the things that we do give away, there's like a couple day window for the food bank to show up before throwing it away. But basically most gets thrown away because of the lack of space for it. The stores would rather have that space for salable product.
The hard thing is that what we're essentially seeing is the word "waste" being overused. A big tax credit for waste is a great idea; you don't want to punish a business for production of goods (which means jobs), so you're covering them a bit if there are unsold items that will expire in some way (degrades, batteries die, something organic that rots, etc...).
Here, the reason these items are "past sell-by" is the warehouse is out of space. The items themselves aren't bad, but they're now not worth the space they take up. That's not really in the same spirit as the definition above.
Bigger credits can help, but I think you also need to set up or incentivize as many donation locations as possible, for all types of items. It's not like every place that takes donations will take literally anything, and figuring out the logistics of who will take what is probably a full-time job. The govt should get that kind of info together (and if there aren't donation centers for items X,Y, and Z, then make them).
Food being thrown away when there are hungry people just outside is inexcusable
Totally immoral.
Totally immoral.