Amazon destroys millions of unsold product

The great Amazon dump - 12th July 2021

Online giant Amazon disposes of millions of unsold products every year. Footage from an ITV News report in the UK uncovered a shockingly high amount of waste.

The undercover filming inside Amazon's Dunfermline warehouse revealed the widespread practice of product disposal. Products were sorted into boxes marked for destruction. They included smart TVs, laptops, drones, hairdryers, top of the range headphones, computer drives and books, along with thousands of sealed face masks.

Instead of these unsold and returned goods being donated to charities and the homeless, they are thrown into bins, carried away by lorries and dumped at either recycling centres or landfill sites.

A former employee spoke to reporters anonymously. He said, "From a Friday to a Friday our target was to generally destroy 130,000 items a week. Dyson fans, Hoovers, the occasional MacBook and iPad; the other day, 20,000 Covid [face] masks still in their wrappers.”

The operational structure Amazon uses might be to blame for this situation. Vendors are encouraged to house their products in Amazon’s massive warehouses. However, vendors must pay for storage as long as the goods remain unsold. It reaches a point where it’s more cost effective to dispose of the goods, especially stock from overseas, than to continue storing them.

Greenpeace's political campaigner Sam Chetan-Welsh commented: “It's an unimaginable amount of unnecessary waste, and just shocking to see a multi-billion pound company getting rid of stock in this way.

"Stuff that’s not even single use but not being used at all, straight off the production line and into the bin. As long as Amazon’s business model relies on this kind of disposal culture, things are only going to get worse. The government must step in and bring in legislation immediately.”

Currently, company policies such as these are legal, and it seems corporate assurances to guarantee economical use of resources are not enough.