H&M, Wal-Mart Destroy Unsold Clothing

BRAVO WHAAA.
It's insane. And it's time we all thought about things differently. All the signs are there that we need to reevaluate our thinking process. Those who do will make the transition with far less trauma.

Originally posted by JohnPhoenix
After so many minutes McDonalds throws its unsold food away as well as other food chains. There is Nothing wrong with this food.

Hospitals make tons of food each day that go to the garbage because they don't sell it all.

There should be a law against this.

These places if they don't want to sell the food could store it in a refrigerator and give it to the homeless at the end of the day.

This is a Crime and Should be a Crime.

There is No Law that says these places cannot store the food and resell it at another time as long as it is kept fresh.

But the willful waste of good food is just not right.

I go to a restaurant that has a daily menu, but if you want something from the day before if they have leftovers, they will heat you some up for free. - no extra charge because this place is a buffet.

if there was a law that made it so people had to donate their food to charity, then nobody would ever buy food... they would just wait for it to be handed over to charity. This goes with clothes too.

You people saying ''give it away'' are missing the point. If you give away all the merchandise then who will buy it? Who will value it? Socialism does NOT work. A factory is not going to make tons of stuff and then wait a few weeks while nobody buys the stuff, and then give it all away. You can imagine that people would just stay home and say to themselves ''why go out shopping when I can just wait and get it for free?'' I think rats in a cage could learn this behavior.

This thing we have going called civilization is an illusion. We must try hard to maintain it. You people look behind the curtain too much. Stop! It is just a little man pulling levers and throwing switches. Get out of here!!!

Originally posted by mattifikation

My guess is, the Wal-Mart clothing was stuff that was damaged to begin with.

Perhaps you did not read the original article. These stores were purposely damaging the goods before they threw them out so that any trash pickers or dumpster divers would not be able to find anything salvageable.

Originally posted by zulu93
These charities, ie. The Salvation Army, etc., would love to have these clothes to distribute.

The Salvation Army does not "distribute" anything to homeless or needy people. They are a business, too.

As a matter of fact, I went to the SA store to ask if they help needy people or homeless with clothes. I was told "NO." I asked why and was told because "they don't want those kind of people hanging out around their store"!!! It would discourage the more 'upscale folk' from patronizing the store.

We have salvation army thrift stores all over the place here; Goodwill stores, and church charity shops.

Basically they recycle used products...clothing, housewares, furniture, appliances, books. They do not give any of it away. They are a capitalist venture just like Walmart and H&M. And some of these thrift stores act like they have gold.


I imagine a very minimal token amount of income from the thrift stores may go toward a soup kitchen...but even so, the workers are volunteers and much of the food is donated goods. Most charities are taking in way more than they are putting out.

Everything they sell was donated to them for free!
No investment.
It's one of the biggest corporate rackets---EVER!

They may be paying minimum wage to a sorter in the back and a couple of cashiers. That's it!

Guess they have their special lawyers and advisors who enable them to make plenty of profit and yet still be considered "non-profit". Guess it's the way you invest your profits that allow you to retain that status.

Charities are one of the sneakiest corporations ever!








[edit on 9-1-2010 by Alethea]

reply to post by Cabaret Voltaire


Giving away unwanted goods are NOT Socialist acts! The excuse that people will NOT buy fresh food and would rather wait till it gets thrown away to get it for FREE is UTTER RUBISH!

Food manufacturers understand why food must be fresh in order that it will sell. The CEO is not some stupid idiot to simply throw away food and go into debt. They have their reasons for it, and it had even been calculated into their costings, to accept such wastage and yet show a profit. This is Capitalism - bosses never lose.

Since they had already worked the figures, where is their losses to give away UNWANTED food? Furthermore, if such food are collected by accredited charity organisations by volunteers to give it to the temporary financially challenged people, such acts are not SOCIALISM but concern and welfare to the less priviledge - a noble act that is less and lesser seen nowadays.

Unless you mean Capitalism is an all out drive based on the law of the jungle - survival of the fittest? George Washington and founding fathers would had been ashamed of you and rolled in his grave.

reply to post by whaaa


What do you mean by destroy? Are they recycled for profit or simply treated as garbage? When I was 20, I worked at a discount retailer for a few months so I didn't have enough time to learn all the in's and out's then...

If treated as garbage then the system is really #ed up beyond repair and thats why I am socialist at heart rather than a capitalist. I hate waste, I hate buying on impulse, I hate disgarding items when slightly broken and I hate working 40-60 hours a week to pay bills.

Capitalism is NOT freedom, IT'S SLAVERY! Not to mention how bad it becomes for the enviroment when municipalities keeping pilling up the garbage rather than burning it. # the ozone layer and CO2, we are polluting our soil and water reserves day-in and day-out!! When will the madness end?

[edit on 9-1-2010 by EarthCitizen07]

Originally posted by Alethea

Originally posted by zulu93
These charities, ie. The Salvation Army, etc., would love to have these clothes to distribute.

The Salvation Army does not "distribute" anything to homeless or needy people. They are a business, too.

As a matter of fact, I went to the SA store to ask if they help needy people or homeless with clothes. I was told "NO." I asked why and was told because "they don't want those kind of people hanging out around their store"!!! It would discourage the more 'upscale folk' from patronizing the store.

You approach one aspect of an organization - - and now are an expert on every aspect of it?

Try again.

reply to post by whaaa


this is an outrage it saddens me to see this type of stuff in the usa i used to be proud to be an american dont get me wrong i know there are still good people in the u.s but most of what i see every day is just sickining how the dollar has made people evil i guess it is true money is the root of all evil and it shows well i have news for every one its only goin to get worse may god have mercy on there souls (even though they dont do the same for there own people)

reply to post by SeekerofTruth101


Put some rats in a cage with one pathway to food. Require that the rats complete some sequence of actions to properly navigate the path and arrive at the food. The rats will learn and perform.

Now build a new pathway that is a straight shot to the food, requiring no additional effort or thought, and watch the rats take the shortcut. They will probably go the easy way and take the path that gets them to the food easier and quicker. This would be your ''give the food away'' scenario.

The world functions on the ''do some work'' scenario, not on the ''get everything with no effort while you smoke pot, drink alcohol and play video games on the dole'' scenario. That is why Republicans are infuriated with Obama and his Socialist pals. Believe me, it is part of human nature. You will never see the day when robots and other machines perform all tasks and allow humans to do nothing but party and have sex all day. It will not happen. It is not part of the Creator's plan. Work brings freedom to those that deserve it. Not everybody deserves it. If you slack off long enough, then the people who do not slack off will conquer you. History is full of stories about groups that did nothing while their neighbors prepared to conquer them.

reply to post by Cabaret Voltaire


Oh and this is why the Left is constantly preaching slack to the people of America. The Left is trying to defeat America slowly with cold war tactics of goofing off, having fun and dying out slowly. Goof off at school. Don't care. Text all day. Get wasted at night. Knock up your girlfriend. Go on the dole. Start a crime wave with your friends when you want something for free. It doesn't matter. Life doesn't matter. The youth are more clever than those old folks. Old people are retarded. Let's change! Let's be free! Let's bespoil ourselves like the Egyptians of the Bible history. First one into the ovens wins!!

reply to post by Cabaret Voltaire


You can paint socialist and communist sympathisers as lazy, evil scum all you like but unlike america's sweat-shop corporate capitalism, they didn't exploit people to maximise profits. They treated workers with respect and dignity, the same respect and dignity you would appreciate if you were a 9-5 employee.

And socialism isn't all that different than mild-capitalism, in fact the two are probably synonomous. Socialism implies government owns all major industry but allows private enterpreneurship for small to medium size business. The idea being to prevent unethical profiteering and to prevent captialist elites from getting to high and forcing their will on the less fortunate masses by government lobbying and bribery.

Socialism is also great in discouraging over-consumption and all the negative effects that are associated with it such as excessive deforestation, excessive fishing, excessive pollution, etc. People work less hours and still make a decent amount of money. In europe 35 hours is considered full-time while in america its 40. People retire at an earlier age such as 50-55 while in america its 63-65 depending on the job of course. Instead of 2 weeks they get at least 1 month PAID vacation and that policy is effective from the VERY FIRST YEAR of employment! Mother has a baby? No problem...9 months leave!

That "my friend" is humanity, not the american and chineese crap people put up with. And oh did I mention the very high minimum wages and rather cheap medical care?

Either the government works for the people or the people work for the elite. I think you prefer the second and I am sure you must have your reasons..

reply to post by Cabaret Voltaire


What a crock of BS. The truth is there are a finite number of steps and processes in making clothing, producing food, building houses, etc. These can and will be automated.

It makes financial sense to use machines rather than people, machines are cheaper to run.

The main thing impeding our progress in automation right now is cheap overseas labor. We have labor laws in this country to ensure jobs are paid at least a minimum wage. Lobbyists for corporations bribed our politicians to allow goods to be imported into this country by workers who don't get that minimum wage.

reply to post by JIMC5499


You never answered my original question:

Would you support changing the tax law to encourage charity? If not, why not?

Instead you quibbled at semantics stating tax breaks are given for expenses not losses.

There is no reason we can't encourage businesses to donate clothing, food, books, etc to charities and discourage businesses from destroying them.

A relatively simple change to the tax code that would not grant tax breaks for expenses when items are destroyed rather than given to charity is all it would take.

Would you oppose this?

Originally posted by Chastral



if there was a law that made it so people had to donate their food to charity, then nobody would ever buy food... they would just wait for it to be handed over to charity. This goes with clothes too.

Hyperbole much?

It never has been, and never will be as black and white a situation as you
seem to want to paint the American population.

Don't let your ideology get in the way of your common sense.

WalMart is a horrible company, and I should know, I worked at one for a summer about 3 years ago. I have loads of info about them. There are 15 walmart stores within 44 miles of my front door. Ever gone around back behind a walmart? Notice anything missing? Big garbage cans found behind any normal place of business. Walmart has incinerators that everything is thrown into with the exception of cardboard (i'll get back to that in a minute). After the incinerator does it's work, water is mixed and seeps out to 1 of 2 "drainage ditches" found out back that they claim stores rain water during a storm only. Now for the cardboard. Walmart doesn't burn or dispose of cardboard because it's sold to someone else. They have big compacting machines where all the scrap cardboard and empty boxes are thrown into. Once enough is in there, ties are placed around it and it's hauled out to big storage containers like thiswww.kkcontainers.com...
Maybe this isn't how things are done at every walmart, but I know for a fact that's how they are done down here. I've personally thrown things into the incinerator and the compactor. I've got more info if you have the time.

Originally posted by double_frick
reply to post by xsheep

 

wow, thats unbelievable!
they should just give all their unused clothes to goodwill or salvation army! :/

i just returned a perfectly good clothing item at target, it was the wrong size. they immediately tagged it for goodwill upon my returning it, strange, but nice.

Actually, I was working for a March of Dimes thrift store last year, and we did get old unsold clothing and returns from Sears. As was noted in earlier posts, Sears does have a problem with people returning such merchandise. Many unscrupulous people go to places like March of Dimes, buy shirts for $4.00, then rush back to Sears to get "their" $29.95 back. In light of this kind of problem, it is not unreasonable for these places to purposely ruin clothing to prevent this from happening.

At March of Dimes, we were instructed to cross out all clothing tags with "Sears" or any Sears brand name with permanent black marker to prevent people from trying to return them. If there was a neck tag with "Jessica", "Arnold Palmer" or any other Sears brand name on it, we went over it with black marker until it was illegible.

March of Dimes throws out clothing too of course. Any item that was deemed unsellable in the store, such as a shirt with a missing button or a pair of pants with a broken zipper, would be put into what we called "bailing". T-shirts and towels would be cut up and sold as rags, and the rest would put into a hydraulic press that would squash them into bails like hay bails, hence the term "bailing". Even good clothing had to go into bailing from time to time if donations were heavy and we needed to remove older stock from the racks to make room for the new stuff.

And what happens to the bailing?

Some of the bailing is sold to companies that shred it and recycle it as stuffing.

If you have ever wondered why some toys or other stuffed items have multicoloured threads and fluff for stuffing, now you know why.

Some of the bailing is sold to textile plants that shred it to extract the fibres and recycle them into new fabric.

If you have ever bought a shirt or other item and wondered why the tag says "100% mixed fibres", now you know why.

Much of the bailing is shipped off to Africa and various third world nations around the world, and distributed to the poor.

If you have watched a news story about some event in Africa and wondered why all those tribesmen are wearing Megadeath T-shirts and clothes that have been out of style since the 1970s, now you know why.

If I make something and it isn't sold, who decides who should get it? Companies are here to make profits and not to help society. That's the plain truth.

Originally posted by glitchinmymatrix
If I make something and it isn't sold, who decides who should get it? Companies are here to make profits and not to help society. That's the plain truth.

Who here has said that companies shouldn't make a profit?

I don't cut up my clothes so others can't wear them. I donat them to a shelter. Explain how that would hurt a company. In fact it would do wonders for the company in public relations and even might boost their profits. Knowing that Walmart has no compassion....I would rather pay more and buy from a mom and pop operation or Target than patronize Walmart ever again. Or until they change their policy!

The man that ordered this to happen should and will suffer. This is the part of ourselves we must change. Compassion for your fellow man cannot and will not be overcome by greed and selfishness. Ignorance is hell.