Footage of Amazon destroying thousands of unsold items in Britain prompts calls for official investi

[Demovictory9]

Footage of Amazon destroying thousands of unsold items in Britain prompts calls for official investigation

LONDON - British lawmakers are demanding a meeting with tech giant Amazon's country manager after an investigation at a warehouse in Scotland revealed that thousands of unsold or returned items - including televisions, books, sealed face masks and laptops - were being destroyed by the company.

Footage from the undercover investigation by ITV News at a warehouse in the Scottish town of Dunfermline, also showed drones, headphones, jewelry and countless other high-value products being placed into boxes labeled "destroy," before huge trucks were followed carrying the stock to landfill sites and recycling centers. The investigation said it amounted to the destruction of millions of products each year.

One ex-employee told ITV News that workers were expected to get rid of an estimated 130,000 items a week. The broadcaster described the practice as "waste on an astonishing level."

Link to tweet

https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Footage-of-Amazon-destroying-thousands-of-unsold-16267653.php

[pandr32]

1. Last thing our landfills need

[Dial H For Hero]

4. I'm puzzled by the call for an official investigation.

As far as I can tell no law has been broken.

[Haggard Celine]

2. I worked at Sam's Club briefly years ago

and they did the same thing there, only not on such a massive scale. Some employees were periodically caught taking items that were to be destroyed, and they were fired. I'm not in favor of doing away with capitalism, but it does need to be tweaked. It's so wasteful!

[MisterNiceKitty]

5. Since they were going to destroy the items anyway

Why not just leave it for any employee who wants to take it.
Unless it's defective that is. Firing staff for taking items to be destroyed is really BS

[Haggard Celine]

7. I agree, although I think what they're trying to

prevent is employees taking the items and selling them. The items could end up being sold by crime rings and used to pay for drugs. Plenty of possibilities.

I hate waste, though. I was just thinking that instead of destroying the merchandise, maybe they could sell them at cost to governments and charities. The governments could take the laptops, for instance, and give them to poor school districts. Plenty of other items could be used as well, such as TVs. There need to be some regulations governing how much companies waste.

[RobinA]

8. Retail Lives In Horror

of anyone getting anything for free. In clothing they used to ruin items given to department store buyers so they could not be used. My store once had a sprinkler go off for no reason in my department. It was a mess. Rusty water everywhere, wet clothing, the fire department sloshing around... The clothing that took the brunt of it was ruined because the water was filthy, but once it got going the water was clear. Every item that even thought about being damp had to be removed. They trashed several million dollars worth of clothing that, once dry, could have been donated to people who needed it, but no.

[zuul]

3. And Amazon's response will be to ruthlessly go after the person who made the video.

[MineralMan]

6. Every retailer does this. Amazon is just a huge retailer.

It is truly a shame, of course, but it's also a business decision. Warehouse space is costly, and keeping it full of older, outmoded, or obsolete unsold items is expensive. So, from time to time, such items are purged and discarded.

Amazon owns them, so Amazon decides what to do with them. Are there options? Of course there are. They could be put on the block for secondary retailers of goods of that kind, but the sort of things that are being discarded may not be salable by anyone. They could be shipped to other countries, where there are shortages of things, but that's an expensive process, as well.

Are their buyers for those goods? Amazon would be glad to sell them to such buyers. In fact, there are people who buy wholesale lots of Amazon merchandise that is outdated, returned or otherwise no longer salable on the Amazon site. Lots of people. There are warehouses where such lots are offered. The buyers tend to sell that stuff on eBay and other outlets. But, there are not enough buyers, because there are not enough consumers buying such merchandise.

However, every retailer gets rid of unsalable merchandise by sending it to landfills or recycling centers. Even mom and pop stores. Once you put the stuff on deep discount in a sale, but it still doesn't sell, you simply write it off as unsalable and get rid of it to make space for stuff that will sell.

Wasteful? Absolutely! But it's not just Amazon.

Go to YouTube and search for "Dumpster Diving." You'll find people who are grabbing this stuff from dumpsters at malls and elsewhere, to sell on eBay, at flea markets, and at other venues like Facebook Marketplace. But, there is too much stuff like that out there, so there aren't enough resellers to handle the volume of unsalable products.

[cbabe]

9. Sharehouse in Seattle

accepts donations to furnish homes for formerly homeless.

Additionally, search landfill mining by the world's destitute.

[msongs]

10. probably a tax write off if destroyed. if given away no write off. eliminate the write off

and force amazon to eat the cost of its waste