Amazon Sending Millions of Brand-New, unopened Items to the Dump

"About 124,000 items at Dunfermline were labeled “destroy” during a single week in April, according to an internal document obtained by ITV News. Just 28,000 items were set aside for donations during the same period. About half of all the stuff that’s trashed are things that people returned, a former Amazon employee told ITV. While the other half are “unopened and still in their shrink wrap,” the ex-employee said."

That is a single factory in the UK. Now multiply that times the hundreds of Amazon depots and you got waste on a scale that cant be imagined. I mean, how cheap are things that they can afford to toss this much stuff and still make a massive profit?

And the food? Christ, aint nobody on earth needs to go hungry really.

Enough to send Bezos to the Moon apparently.

www.theverge.com...

Personally, I was thinking of tailing one of these trucks to the dump and scoring some goods...to sell on E-Bay. lol
Here is a vid of the same subject with a whistleblower.

Christ....take a look at the stats on food waste.

Just a teaser...

"The food currently lost or wasted in Latin America could feed 300 million people "

"In the United States 30 per cent of all food, worth US$48.3 billion (€32.5 billion), is thrown away each year. It is estimated that about half of the water used to produce this food also goes to waste since agriculture is the largest human use of water."

"United Kingdom households waste an estimated 6.7 million tonnes of food every year, around one-third of the 21.7 million tonnes purchased. This means that approximately 32 per cent of all food purchased per year is not eaten."

And so on and so forth.....

www.unep.org...

a reply to: lakenheath24


This is what happens when cheap slave made goods flood the world- the cost and liability to restock returns is greater than the profit margin when re-selling them.
It's cheaper to throw away returns rather than re-stock and re-sell them. The same thing happens at a small scale on ebay- if an item is shipped and it arrives defective in any way, rather than dealing with returning the product the seller will just have you trash it, and they'll send another from stock.

Especially with food, there's an inherent risk with returns. Once the item leaves their hands, they have to assume the product is tainted- if it came back to them poisoned and was re-sold to another person, the logistics of tracking down the source would be a nightmare- not to mention the potential lawsuits, and then added insurance costs...
Cheaper to bin it.

This is just one more reason you should always make an effort to purchase locally, and support your local economy.

a reply to: lakenheath24

This has been going on for a long time.
My wife worked in a fabric store 30ish years ago.
She would throw patterns by the box load in the dumpster because the manufacturer updated.
They were told to poor water on them too but that rarely happened.
She would also cut the cover off of magazines then throw out the rest.

They had to keep a lock on the dumpster to keep people out.

a reply to: lakenheath24

across from my old shop there was a tupperware outlet.
at least twice a week they would fill two eight yard dumpsters with containers. we would wait until they all left and go and get them. i had hundreds of them, all kinds and still have some to this day.

one evening they saw us out there getting them, so the next time went went to get them we found they started drilling holes in them. so we kept on taking them and used them for parts containers, and part pans.

i guess they saw us doing that to, one day we went to get some they had cut them into pieces.

another thing we did was install and pull coffee and other kitchen equipment. some of the manufacturers would not want us to send back the equipment. told us to destroy the equipment to the point of beyond use. some of it was some of it wasn't.

some of the other manufacturers that we were a service center for would do the same thing on some of their equipment.

originally posted by: lakenheath24
Christ....take a look at the stats on food waste.

Just a teaser...

"The food currently lost or wasted in Latin America could feed 300 million people "

"In the United States 30 per cent of all food, worth US$48.3 billion (€32.5 billion), is thrown away each year. It is estimated that about half of the water used to produce this food also goes to waste since agriculture is the largest human use of water."

"United Kingdom households waste an estimated 6.7 million tonnes of food every year, around one-third of the 21.7 million tonnes purchased. This means that approximately 32 per cent of all food purchased per year is not eaten."

And so on and so forth.....

www.unep.org...

What it tells you is that capitalism is efficient when it comes to production.

Capitalism is so efficient we produce waste... socialism so inefficient it produces bread lines.

With food, a big issue is regulations and liability. Sure, the food could feed those in need but you have liability related to spoilage.

a reply to: Bluntone22

I'm not a big welfare guy, but I dig a lot of what Jesus talked about. And this just throws up a conundrum for me. Basically, every item on earth has a built in 30-40% margin for loss. Probably more like 300.-400%.

I mean if the world really wanted a nanny state, it would scarf up all this waste and hand it out to poor peeps for free.

originally posted by: lakenheath24
I mean, how cheap are things that they can afford to toss this much stuff and still make a massive profit?

Amazon isn't paying for it, the suppliers are.

a reply to: Edumakated

Efficient? More like overzealous and subsidized in a lot of cases.

Ford doesnt crush 50,000 cars a years do they?
Wimpy don't burn down 30% of their new homes do they?

a reply to: AugustusMasonicus

Thats the point though...consumers are....and the environment with all those items going in a hole somewhere.

a reply to: lakenheath24
Amazon does auction off pallets of random items. I've seen YouTube's where people are buying a pile of stuff for cheep then selling it at flea markets. Google " Amazon wholesale pallet liquidation"

originally posted by: lakenheath24
Thats the point though...consumers are....and the environment with all those items going in a hole somewhere.

Amazon is like the honey badger.

a reply to: Bluntone22

I knew someone who worked at Canadian tire for a while. They have a large fenced off dumpster with cameras. Any returns are supposed to be taken out back by employees, destroyed then put into the dumpster. Thousands of dollars worth of stuff. He was making minimum wage, which at the time worked out to something like $850 or $900 a cheque. Some of the things he destroyed were worth more than his pay cheque.

a reply to: misskat1

Why would I google that for? And what percentage of total waste is this pallet you speak of? Google it for me and find out.

a reply to: AugustusMasonicus

Thats a fact. The man himself thanked peeps like me for for buying screws and flashlights from him so he could fly into space.

a reply to: hounddoghowlie

if its just going to the dump, they should let people have it.. why pay the extra fee anyway? You can save money that way.. hell dominos and pizzahut use to set out the cooked (but old like morning/unsold)pizza's for the homeless at the end of the night in the area instead of trashing it.

The fact they purposely cut it up, etc to me is the most wasteful part. I don't think I could ever comply with destroying perfectly good items/food that someone could benefit from. Especially when places like dollar general make 7million per employee per year in 100% profits, and only pay you 14-20k if your lucky. (Other places like walmart range between 50-100mil per employee capital)

a reply to: dug88


Disgusting, but efficient....allegedly.

I bet the local dump peeps are rolling in it. Or they should be. Then again they work in a dump so may not be of the entrepreneurial mindset.

a reply to: BlackArrow


Problem there is that nobody would buy retail. See the conundrum?

a reply to: lakenheath24

Sure they would, But there's a lot of people that literally have nothing. I met a homeless family, and their daughter's school backpack was literally fished out of a dumpster because they were homeless. There are a lot of 'medium/wealthy' people who make up the larger % of the population who won't just because its gross(Their standards are different.. because they are the wasteful majority) You look at places like california and a majority of them spit on the homeless.

Then they wonder why they can't support themselves in an economy where houses cost half a mil - 5mil, and rent is 3k a month.. unless you rent a room. But if your on any form of ssi your not allowed to have that much income to begin with, 2k(this cap hasn't scaled with inflation at all, and has been this way since the 70s) tops and there are NO homes for rent in that range when you account for electricity, water, and food etc. So most people that are literally stuck in that posistion can't even get off the streets because of a catch 22.

Even if the homeless resold the stuff, somehow. It would help get them off the streets.. People need to stop being so greedy, over every little thing in a economy that's failing where your green won't mean # probably by the end of the year.

I make less then 700$ a month, so imagine my living situation and I NEVER DUMPSTER DIVED. Because there are people who are worse off then me. Even when I was homeless, living in a car. Still didn't do it because I at least had a place to sleep. So its all about standards and morals, you wanna screw over your fellow man who's worse off then you. Go for it, you'll just look like # when ur friends find out the guy with the mercedes/tsla was diving in the trash can.

a reply to: lakenheath24
Sorry I was just adding to collective knowledge on what happens with Amazon pallets. I can't link on this tablet, so I left directions on how to locate the info if anyone is interested. I've never bought a pallet so I have no knowledge of the waste. But auctioning the products for resell seems like less waste.