As I entered a building supply store someone was smashing all the ceramic tiles that were on the wall. He was about ¾ through them all. I said: hold on… I’ll take those sample tiles that are still on the wall. I can find a purpose for them even if each one is a different color. He said he could not justify to his boss giving them away and that he would get in trouble. He asked if I wanted to buy them. But a mixed bag of random tiles is worth close to zero to me without having a project in mind. Of course the problem is the business makes nothing off them if they give them away and they risk losing a sale if someone does a project with them that otherwise would require a purchase.
The bizarre thing is this happens every year because (like clothing) the tiles go out of fashion annually. Most are solid colors so hard to get my head around how a solid color tile would go out of style so quickly especially when a vast majority of them are very neutral colors (which are quite forgettable). Who walks into your kitchen and says “dude, you’re out of fashion… those tiles are over 1 year old?”
Along the same lines, Amazon destroys copious amounts of goods that are still new in packaging instead of selling them to an overstock specialist or donating to charity. An Amazon insider told me it’s because the warehouse space is limited and they prioritize whatever stock moves the fastest. So the slower moving stock gets destroyed just because of a space issue. They told me management is very strict about who has access to the area where these products get staged for disposal. They make sure to select someone who will follow through and won’t take the stuff home or give it to someone who will put it on eBay (they don’t want to compete for sales with a competitor selling their own dumped stock).
That’s like reason# 50 why I boycott Amazon.
A lot of businesses destroy stock. 1 broken cup in a pack of 6? Into the crusher. Not saying it’s an acceptable practice, but it’s more common than just Amazon.
I think Amazon might be the only business I’ve encountered where there are no defects in what they destroy. The insider told me the stuff being destroyed does not even look like anything that would be hard to sell – even things like smartphones still in sealed boxes.
I recently walked into a grocery store and saw someone cutting open the net bags of onions (or something) and throwing out the bad items and dumping the rest in the bins where people select what they want. I was glad to see it wasn’t being wasted. This was a tiny independent shop… not sure if any of the big grocers do that.
The clothes industry comes to mind. A new “collection” every two weeks, and the “totally out of fashion” stuff from last week gets shredded before it even leaves the Asian slave labour camps. Well done, Primark, Shein & Co.!
In the early 2000s, I worked at a supermarket and saw how much food gets thrown away. It’s really depressing. I heard there’s programs now that convert supermarket food waste into food for the less fortunate. But uncertain if it’s a thing in every city/every supermarket brand.
When I worked in a flower store that pretended to be green we threw away tons of stuff. Like roses that didn’t have nice flowers on them, eventhough they’ll come back within a few months. And oh god so much paper and plastic! Like a significant part of my job was unpacking stuff, ripping apart boxes, and managing trash.
Not to mention that roses come from Kenya on an airplane!
Let’s be fair: it’s amazing that a bunch of apes are able to create any sort of order at all in such a huge and complex world. Still it’s fucked up.
Offer to help him clean up, take them to your car, and take them to an art school for mosaic class.
