Amazon in the UK, Wasting 124,000 items a week (tech/consumer waste)

[Quackers101]

Summary

 

Tech Waste.

Amazon in the UK, have shown to destroy a wast amount of items.

From undercover footage shows, they use options to destroy certain unopened and what seems to be good products.

They are labeled destroy, which is gathered and thrown away to a landfill and other places they use.

 

The amount seems to be up towards 124,000 items in a WEEK, everything from books, forks to TVs and laptops.

 

Quotes

Quote

Amazon is destroying millions of items of unsold stock in one of its UK warehouses every year, an ITV News investigation has uncovered.
Many of the products - including smart TVs and laptops - are often new and unused.

Quote

A former Amazon employee secretly filmed the 'destruction zone' at the company's Dunfermline warehouse where unwanted goods are marked 'destroy'.
A leaked document showed more than 124,000 items marked as 'destroy' in just a week.

Quote

Amazon told ITV News:
We are working towards a goal of zero product disposal and our priority is to resell, donate to charitable organisations or recycle any unsold products.

 

 

My thoughts

This is often from companies that want to claim they are "green" or going "carbon neutral", while pulling this kind of crap onto everyone.

Not only that, but from what we have seen how they treat their workers in both the US and europe, its not something to trust and it's all for senseless profit.

Also the problem of general WASTE that can be BOUGHT from amazon, like 2x more disposable products compared to what you find in a general store.

Amazon is going to grow like cancer, and make the body (everyone else) have to deal with the aftermath, while they soar what ever profit that might become less, due to the issues they bring upon the world.

Like building up a trash pile, until all piles are filled and no where to put it and other things.

 

Sources

 

[Vishera]

The space the items take can be used for the items that amazon actually sell.

But the wastefulness and complete disregard to the value of the items and the environment is just terrible.

[Quackers101]

1 hour ago, Vishera said:

The space the items take can be used for the items that amazon actually sell.

Until it just happens to those too, and continues.

[poochyena]

Would love to hear amazon's side of it. There is absolutely good reason to trash things. For electronics, its could be due to the item being faulty (those outlets could have been recalled due to being poor quality and a safety hazard), knockoffs (that drill looked like a knockoff makita drill, might even be the same one project farm tested edit; nvm i can see the box more clearly later in the video, looks like this. but still, could be a knockoff wesco drill.), but idk why the books and some other items would be destroyed.

I think its misleading to suggest ALL of it is destroyed for no reason, but I think its safe to say SOME stuff is needlessly destroyed. Hard to say exactly what the ratio is without hearing amazon's side of the story.

[WolframaticAlpha]

3 hours ago, Quackers101 said:

Summary

 

Tech Waste.

Amazon in the UK, have shown to destroy a wast amount of items.

From undercover footage shows, they use options to destroy certain unopened and what seems to be good products.

They are labeled destroy, which is gathered and thrown away to a landfill and other places they use.

 

The amount seems to be up towards 124,000 items in a WEEK, everything from books, forks to TVs and laptops.

 

Quotes

 

 

My thoughts

This is often from companies that want to claim they are "green" or going "carbon neutral", while pulling this kind of crap onto everyone.

Not only that, but from what we have seen how they treat their workers in both the US and europe, its not something to trust and it's all for senseless profit.

Also the problem of general WASTE that can be BOUGHT from amazon, like 2x more disposable products compared to what you find in a general store.

Amazon is going to grow like cancer, and make the body (everyone else) have to deal with the aftermath, while they soar what ever profit that might become less, due to the issues they bring upon the world.

Like building up a trash pile, until all piles are filled and no where to put it and other things.

 

Sources

 

damn. 

 

 

 

 

PLIZ GIB DEM TU MEI BAYZOS SAAR!

 

Also you can say that you are carbon neutral if you aren't using carbon at workplace. Apple, MS and google are carbon neutral, yet they make phones with plastic stuff

[Bombastinator]

I’m reminded a bit of the stuff “crazy eddie’s” pulled for insurance stuff.  In the US they sell pallets full of returns.  You don’t get to choose what you get very closely though.  I’m wondering if there’s a specific reason for this having to do with warranties or something.  Amazon has to buy that stuff to destroy it.  Doesn’t make sense.  Has to be a reason.

[Quackers101]

7 hours ago, poochyena said:

Would love to hear amazon's side of it. There is absolutely good reason to trash things. For electronics, its could be due to the item being faulty

 

I think its misleading to suggest ALL of it is destroyed for no reason, but I think its safe to say SOME stuff is needlessly destroyed. Hard to say exactly what the ratio is without hearing amazon's side of the story.

Sure, but I doubt anything warrent so much... every week or if it just shows amazon is bigger than what it actually is. And get and sell more crap than it can handle or allows for this to happen way too much, which is why I state its bigger than it should ever be. Were I find other retail stores and storage sellers to be doing a lot better (although having annoying discounts on known bad quality or opened stuff to get them out of storage). And why I'm glad amazon is not a big part, when it comes to some of the countries in europe, to why we shouldn't allow them to plant themselves in those countries unless its for other deals that might make sense.

 

while this was added a bit later, how amazon sort of responded to ITV:

" We are working towards a goal of zero product disposal and our priority is to resell, donate to charitable organisations or recycle any unsold products."

so, I doubt a lot of it is due to safety reasons. Although UK do have certain rules that might make certain products illegal to sell due to not being qualified in quality product to be used under UK law. Like most UK plugs have fuses in them, and if they dont have one, derp away.

[AMD A10-9600P]

Depressing stuff this, let's hope the government can actually get Amazon to do something about this. I'm hardly surprised though.

[Sousuke]

Instead of being destroyed they should be donated to charities. 

 

Ether the charities can refurbish products or recycle the items which can not be saved.

 

Money raised then can support local or global issues. 

 

Would be a BIG PR Boom for Amazon! 

[LAwLz]

9 hours ago, poochyena said:

Would love to hear amazon's side of it. There is absolutely good reason to trash things. For electronics, its could be due to the item being faulty (those outlets could have been recalled due to being poor quality and a safety hazard), knockoffs (that drill looked like a knockoff makita drill, might even be the same one project farm tested edit; nvm i can see the box more clearly later in the video, looks like this. but still, could be a knockoff wesco drill.), but idk why the books and some other items would be destroyed.

I think its misleading to suggest ALL of it is destroyed for no reason, but I think its safe to say SOME stuff is needlessly destroyed. Hard to say exactly what the ratio is without hearing amazon's side of the story.

The amount of people who just saw this video and think "Amazon are evil and just cares about profits, they want to destroy the Earth!" is astonishing.

Do people seriously believe Amazon is a comic book villain that wants to destroy all these products that could have been sold? They are basically destroying money and would rather not do that.

Thanks for asking for Amazon's side of the story and not just grabbing a pitchfork.

 

 

For those wondering, what is happening is that most of these products being destroyed are returned to Amazon and can't be sold sent to another buyer.

For example in the video people seemed appalled that they were destroying COVID-19 masks. Well, if you buy a COVID-19 mask and then return it, that item can not be sold to someone else. Imagine the scandal if Amazon were caught reselling pre-owned COVID-19 masks. The same goes for any sanitary item including anything that is used on your body or in the kitchen. Even if for example a knife appears to be unused, it can't be resold because it MIGHT have been used and could spread disease or things like allergies.

 

Electronics gets destroyed if they are returned for some reason that can't easily be verified (would be sold as refurbished) and if the box is opened (which can be hard to tell from a video). If someone returns a computer with the reason "turns itself off after 1 hour" then Amazon won't employ someone to verify if that claim is true, they will assume it is defective and destroy it. It can't be resold either since it is supposedly broken.

With some devices such as Apple devices, they might also be locked to an Apple ID and can't be factory reset even if Amazon wanted to spend the time and effort to do it.

 

Another reason why things might be destroyed is that if Amazon is stocking products for other companies, and it might be a request from them.

For example some company orders a bunch of t-shirts and pays Amazon to store it in their warehouses. What happens if those shirts doesn't sell as well as the third party seller hoped? Well they will have to keep paying Amazon for the warehouse space, but the seller isn't making any money. So instead of just paying Amazon to keep stock nobody is buying, they can ask Amazon to destroy the goods.

 

Another thing that might happen is that a third party seller goes bankrupt, or gets caught being fraud (like selling knock-off AirPods). What's Amazon suppose to do then? They got a bunch of inventory that nobody owns anymore (since the company disappeared) and in some cases it might even be illegal for them to sell the products (like knock-off products). So they destroy it.

 

Another thing that might happen is that during transport, the package gets damaged. If for example a package with porslin gets damaged during transport, or loading/offloading then they might as well destroy it since there is a very high risk of it being destroyed anyway. It's not worth the shipping cost and angry customer to send an item that might be fine, but is probably broken.

 

 

This has been known for years upon years. It's the same in a lot of industries. These are just stuff I've heard from friends, colleagues and people online.

My sister's ex-boyfriend used to intern at a bread factory here in Sweden and his job was mostly to throw bread away. Bread that they had baked in anticipation of large orders but that didn't sell, or bread that wasn't perfect (maybe it was a hiccup in the machine and it was in the oven for too long, or too short, or it got dented, etc).

 

 

Don't like seeing items being destroyed? Tell everyone you know to stop returning things they have bought. 

This goes for all stores by the way, not just Amazon.

 

 

  

1 hour ago, huilun02 said:

Amazon should just make a new section on their site for unsellables. A sort of "bargain bin"

This way they can make a bit of profit or at least cut cost.

They actually already have that.

https://www.amazon.com/Outlet/

 

There is also BStock.com but that's probably too big for your average consumer. But basically, when a store gets a ton of stock over, or lots of returns, or broken stuff, they can sell it to BStock.com which then puts it up for action.

The problem is that it's usually products in bulk. For example here are 40 iPhone 12 Pro Max that GameStop weren't able to sell. "Just" 25 000 dollars.

 

Want 647 broken TVs previously owned by WalMart? It could be yours for 727 dollars!

Here are 5 MacBooks being sold for 650 USD. Do they work? Seems like they do judging by the pictures, but who knows.

[Quackers101]

13 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

The amount of people who just saw this video and think "Amazon are evil and just cares about profits, they want to destroy the Earth!" is astonishing.

Do people seriously believe Amazon is a comic book villain that wants to destroy all these products that could have been sold? They are basically destroying money and would rather not do that.

Thanks for asking for Amazon's side of the story and not just grabbing a pitchfork.

Not sure the size of the storage, but 124,000 a week seems quite excessive if it was per box not per unit in a box. (like 1 box of masks which contains 50 masks).

But I guess every single unit might be counted. Destroying money? sort of, their main goal is also to sell. So if more is sold than returned or destroyed, then sell more than what you can control, or know if its any good or not. Like one of the statements for the amazon boss at this site said "we are destroying little but I dont have the numbers with me" or something like that. Which to me, feels like they are covering up certain business practices. (although that footage seemed weird and manipulated, so not too sure)

13 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

For those wondering, what is happening is that most of these products being destroyed are returned to Amazon and can't be sold sent to another buyer.

For example in the video people seemed appalled that they were destroying COVID-19 masks. Well, if you buy a COVID-19 mask and then return it, that item can not be sold to someone else. Imagine the scandal if Amazon were caught reselling pre-owned COVID-19 masks. The same goes for any sanitary item including anything that is used on your body or in the kitchen. Even if for example a knife appears to be unused, it can't be resold because it MIGHT have been used and could spread disease or things like allergies.

Yes, there have also been fake masks and so on. So it's very unsure whatever that deal was.

13 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

Another thing that might happen is that a third party seller goes bankrupt, or gets caught being fraud (like selling knock-off AirPods). What's Amazon suppose to do then? They got a bunch of inventory that nobody owns anymore (since the company disappeared) and in some cases it might even be illegal for them to sell the products (like knock-off products). So they destroy it.

 

Another thing that might happen is that during transport, the package gets damaged. If for example a package with porslin gets damaged during transport, or loading/offloading then they might as well destroy it since there is a very high risk of it being destroyed anyway. It's not worth the shipping cost and angry customer to send an item that might be fine, but is probably broken.

13 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

Don't like seeing items being destroyed? Tell everyone you know to stop returning things they have bought. 

This goes for all stores by the way, not just Amazon.

13 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

Electronics gets destroyed if they are returned for some reason that can't easily be verified (would be sold as refurbished) and if the box is opened (which can be hard to tell from a video). If someone returns a computer with the reason "turns itself off after 1 hour" then Amazon won't employ someone to verify if that claim is true, they will assume it is defective and destroy it. It can't be resold either since it is supposedly broken.

With some devices such as Apple devices, they might also be locked to an Apple ID and can't be factory reset even if Amazon wanted to spend the time and effort to do it.

Well this is another reason "amazon is too big", as we do have tech stores that will look into things and you would get your money back.

While I don't know about recycling or destruction they might do? At least they do seem to be focused on their job, not sure how manifactures of a product deal with cases like other than apple with repair or recycle, Motherboards etc. If they fix or swap for a new one.

Could be a fun LTT video on what company sends the unit back after a "repair" and what they did.

 

13 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

This has been known for years upon years. It's the same in a lot of industries. These are just stuff I've heard from friends, colleagues and people online.

My sister's ex-boyfriend used to intern at a bread factory here in Sweden and his job was mostly to throw bread away. Bread that they had baked in anticipation of large orders but that didn't sell, or bread that wasn't perfect (maybe it was a hiccup in the machine and it was in the oven for too long, or too short, or it got dented, etc).

Yes, some quality control one would expect. as for food, it can be reused else where when thrown.

Although not going towards people, but can't say I'm too sure what deal there is with sorting or dealing with thrown food or rather organic waste.

Also just like some people try in the US and else where, some might have a deal with others that might take "perfectly edible" food as a donation, something more could do, but I guess some dont due to the problems it might entail. And some stores have a sale on unsold products (would be thrown at some point).

 

[Master Delta Chief]

32 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

The amount of people who just saw this video and think "Amazon are evil and just cares about profits, they want to destroy the Earth!" is astonishing.

It's true though. 

 

32 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

For those wondering, what is happening is that most of these products being destroyed are returned to Amazon and can't be sold sent to another buyer.

For example in the video people seemed appalled that they were destroying COVID-19 masks. Well, if you buy a COVID-19 mask and then return it, that item can not be sold to someone else. Imagine the scandal if Amazon were caught reselling pre-owned COVID-19 masks. The same goes for any sanitary item including anything that is used on your body or in the kitchen. Even if for example a knife appears to be unused, it can't be resold because it MIGHT have been used and could spread disease or things like allergies.

 

Electronics gets destroyed if they are returned for some reason that can't easily be verified (would be sold as refurbished) and if the box is opened (which can be hard to tell from a video). If someone returns a computer with the reason "turns itself off after 1 hour" then Amazon won't employ someone to verify if that claim is true, they will assume it is defective and destroy it. It can't be resold either since it is supposedly broken.

With some devices such as Apple devices, they might also be locked to an Apple ID and can't be factory reset even if Amazon wanted to spend the time and effort to do it.

I get that certain items like used masks cannot obviously be resold to a customer, but in the case that the article mentioned, they were still in their plastic wrappers. Those can in fact be resold IF thoroughly checked by those who are in charge of say quality control or other service department in order to keep containment of potential diseases or avoid other problems. Those things take time and cost money, but considering we're talking about such a large corporation, we should expect them to implement such solutions whether by public pressure or by regulation. 

 

E-waste is such a big problem and your second point basically proves it. Amazon SHOULD either use a third-party service or create an internal department to check for these possible damages that may have occurred. There shouldn't be any reason if they have to assume that said product is 'broken'. If it were it should be repaired if it's beyond it, they should at the very least scavenge parts of say computers or other potential products in order for those to be resold/reused. 

 

That said, your takes basically enables what these sorts of companies do. It's always about being cost-efficient and such just to avoid these actual solutions that can benefit the people. 

 

36 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

Don't like seeing items being destroyed? Tell everyone you know to stop returning things they have bought. 

No? If you have bought the wrong item or worse the product itself is damaged, the company should fix the product if possible on time or replace it with a working one if said time cannot be reached (due to complications of the product, etc...). Such solutions already exist, but whether Amazon implements them properly I am cannot be certain of, especially not now seeing this reoccurring bullshit. 

[Quackers101]

this goes into that kind of topic, and the future of "consumerism"?

CNBC - What Retailers Like Amazon Do With Unsold Inventory

 

[NeuesTestament]

Doesn't seem to be an unreasonable amount considiring it's a country of 65 million people and that would result in them moving quite a lot of inventory.

[12345678]

I mean nothing new here, the same shit happens everywhere, it's not just amazon or other big corporations; 

 

is just cheaper to throw it away, rather than having all of that stuff in the warehouse 

who knows when they will be sold, so they are just occupying space that could be used for something else

 

in fact garbage bings that are adjacent of some shop, are usually picked by trasher who look around for stuff that's Worth something

 

 

[Bombastinator]

4 hours ago, Quackers101 said:

Sure, but I doubt anything warrent so much... every week or if it just shows amazon is bigger than what it actually is. And get and sell more crap than it can handle or allows for this to happen way too much, which is why I state its bigger than it should ever be. Were I find other retail stores and storage sellers to be doing a lot better (although having annoying discounts on known bad quality or opened stuff to get them out of storage). And why I'm glad amazon is not a big part, when it comes to some of the countries in europe, to why we shouldn't allow them to plant themselves in those countries unless its for other deals that might make sense.

 

while this was added a bit later, how amazon sort of responded to ITV:

" We are working towards a goal of zero product disposal and our priority is to resell, donate to charitable organisations or recycle any unsold products."

so, I doubt a lot of it is due to safety reasons. Although UK do have certain rules that might make certain products illegal to sell due to not being qualified in quality product to be used under UK law. Like most UK plugs have fuses in them, and if they dont have one, derp away.

I agree that it sounds bigger than it should.  An interesting stat. My personal suspicion is there is a legal contribution but Amazon selling more stuff than it looks like also makes a lot of sense. @12345678 points out that all retail stores do this so apparently it’s evidence  of a general industrial problem.

Edited June 22, 2021 by Bombastinator

[poochyena]

1 hour ago, Master Delta Chief said:

Those can in fact be resold IF thoroughly checked by those who are in charge of say quality control or other service department in order to keep containment of potential diseases or avoid other problems. Those things take time and cost money, but considering we're talking about such a large corporation, we should expect them to implement such solutions whether by public pressure or by regulation. 

Go to the clearance section of any store and you will see a giant pile of masks. I wouldn't be surprised if the masks are perfectly fine. You can't donate what no one wants even for free.

 

[Bombastinator]

3 minutes ago, poochyena said:

Go to the clearance section of any store and you will see a giant pile of masks. I wouldn't be surprised if the masks are perfectly fine. You can't donate what no one wants even for free.

 

I worry that one may pick up again.  The virus isn’t gone.

[poochyena]

13 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

I worry that one may pick up again.  The virus isn’t gone.

well sure, cloth masks last for many years, and people aren't throwing away the masks they own, so even if there is a big surge in a virus, there wouldn't be big demand for masks.

[Master Delta Chief]

14 minutes ago, poochyena said:

Go to the clearance section of any store and you will see a giant pile of masks. I wouldn't be surprised if the masks are perfectly fine. You can't donate what no one wants even for free.

 

That's a problem as well and it correlates to something that I forgot to mention which is overproduction. For cases like these, there are a handful of reasons why people wouldn't get it. At this point though for these 'throwaway' masks, they should just be recycled.  

[Quackers101]

39 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

I agree that it sounds bigger than it should.  An interesting stat. My personal suspicion is there is a legal contribution but Amazon selling more stuff than it looks like also makes a lot of sense. @12345678 points out that all retail stores do this so apparently it’s evidence  of a general industrial problem.

yes, might be overblown in the way its put and to what kind of scale.

Which is what amazon prides itself on, scalability, not to reduce.

 

As of a general problem, yes and no, kind of.

Consuming is going to grow, and when one business finds success in having a product that is lesser product but more for consumption , other business have to follow suit. Which something amazon and others are allowing in a bigger scale and encourage. Consume more, more returns and more waste, when they turn down the prices, others have to follow, to stay in business. To things like for example razors, make them cheaper and "one time use" instead of having it for 10 years, when others have to follow that path, unless they have special orders.

 

But what other retail stores might have, as spoken in the video and others, that amazon can have a return rate from 10% to 40% compared to retail stores with 7-8% + looked into more often than something big like amazon. Also then factor in how more time they might have on checking something, compared to the nature of how big amazon is and how much time they would need to solve or look into things? Which is why some talk about the free return from amazon and others, is not sustainable and has a hidden fee that makes it worse for everyone. A bit like a big company hiding taxes, while other smaller ones have to pay taxes.

 

Or if someone else knows a better way to put this.

[RejZoR]

They should really improve Amazon's damaged goods system. The generic non-descriptive info on damaged items is next to useless. Also a photo of it would be super helpful to see the scope of damage. Box or item is damaged, snap a photo and more descriptive info about the damage and sell it. People often don't care about dents or scratches if it's cheaper enough.

[12345678]

23 minutes ago, Master Delta Chief said:

That's a problem as well and it correlates to something that I forgot to mention which is overproduction. For cases like these, there are a handful of reasons why people wouldn't get it.

the issue is the market itself imao, consumer stuff is meant to be thrown away anyway

23 minutes ago, Master Delta Chief said:

At this point though for these 'throwaway' masks, they should just be recycled.  

they ain't, biowaste is usually burned

it's cheap, it's faster and it's "safer"

 

maybe some state does say that they do recicle stuff, but spoiler alert, they usually don't, if they can't burn or put em in some wasteyard, they export the trash to some other countries that can do the job done, or illegally throw it somewhere

[Blademaster91]

13 hours ago, poochyena said:

Would love to hear amazon's side of it. There is absolutely good reason to trash things. For electronics, its could be due to the item being faulty (those outlets could have been recalled due to being poor quality and a safety hazard), knockoffs (that drill looked like a knockoff makita drill, might even be the same one project farm tested edit; nvm i can see the box more clearly later in the video, looks like this. but still, could be a knockoff wesco drill.), but idk why the books and some other items would be destroyed.

I think its misleading to suggest ALL of it is destroyed for no reason, but I think its safe to say SOME stuff is needlessly destroyed. Hard to say exactly what the ratio is without hearing amazon's side of the story.

It makes no sense as to why Amazon is even allowing those knockoff products, I think that means Amazon is so huge they can't even keep track of the knockoff stuff that comes in. This also reminds me of the old AMD CPU's in new Ryzen boxes scamming, which Amazon should be doing closer inspection on and recycling instead of selling.

[Bombastinator]

1 minute ago, Blademaster91 said:

It makes no sense as to why Amazon is even allowing those knockoff products, I think that means Amazon is so huge they can't even keep track of the knockoff stuff that comes in. This also reminds me of the old AMD CPU's in new Ryzen boxes scamming, which Amazon should be doing closer inspection on and recycling instead of selling.

I suspect that is correct.  Amazon used to be just products they carried.  Fulfilled by Amazon was a real cesspool for a while.  Bad enough that “fulfilled by Amazon” became “this is probably fake.  Pretend it doesn’t exist”.  I understand it’s a bit better now.  I don’t know how much.  Personally I suspect “fulfilled by Amazon” probably needs to be pulled entirely or have its who they”fulfill” requirements changed and made a lot more strict.  Supposedly this happened to a degree.  I don’t know.  I don’t buy Amazon much.  I have a sister that does and she’s actually received a brushing product which says a lot.  She actually likes the thing.  It’s a bird shaped snowball maker.  Not something she would have paid for, but as a free product it was kind of neat.  Sucks to be involuntarily part of a scam though.  She reported it I understand.