Why Do Stores Throw Away So Many Perfectly Good Products? I Went Dumpster Diving to Find Out.

[Diamond_Dog]

(Not me, Diamond_Dog, the author of the article).

********

Before I flew to Texas to fully immerse myself in the reality of dumpster diving, I spent hours online watching videos of people pulling scores of discarded products out of various stores’ trash bags. As I scrolled, I saw influencer after influencer yelping with excitement as they found all sorts of delightful stuff for free — a bicycle! makeup! candles! Lego sets! luxury leather handbags! — just by digging through the garbage.

Dumpster diving is a treasure hunt and a game of chance. What will you find next? A bounty of gold jewelry? Or … a pile of trash?

And all I have to do is peek (or dive) into a dumpster to find out? Count me in!

So over the past few months, I descended into the muck — following dumpster divers both online and in person — to get an intimate look at what’s hiding in our trash bins.

The experience made me uncomfortable, dirty, tired, and a little nauseated.

And I had an absolute blast.

https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/dumpster-diving-investigation/?campaign_id=190&emc=edit_ufn_20260530&instance_id=176410&nl=from-the-times&regi_id=74838209&segment_id=220702&user_id=a9aa4f5d6050c1b2fa535a7ed5551a5b

[marble falls]

1. Economy of scale and tax write-offs.

[ProfessorGAC]

2. Not Really A Write-Off

The cost of goods at wholesale is already part of the expenses, so on a P&L statement, the expenses have no revenue offset. No taxes are paid anyway.
Now, if they gave away stuff past it's sell-by date, (but still suitable for consumption) to a food pantry, the lost margin IS a write-off. But, only the margins, not the retail value, as what the store paid is already non-taxable.
In our tax accounting class in MBA school, retail was a focus for about 40% of the term, and grocery was a case study for a quarter of that. Learned quite a lot in that class.

[Igel]

9. Against inventory.

Which at the end of the year is taxable.

[Goonch]

3. ;-{) WHO KNOWS WHAT........

[displacedvermoter]

6. Is that a Bob Kennedy photo?

[Jacson6]

4. Paywalled article. n/t

[Diamond_Dog]

7. I'm sorry, Jacson6. It came through for me.

[lame54]

5. Sounds very RFK Jr-ey

[hunter]

8. All the dumpsters around here are locked up because they attract homeless people.

On the other hand our local food bank is pretty good.

Life would be better if we simply provided homeless people with safe, secure, comfortable places to live. It wouldn't have to be anything fancy.

The "no free lunch" people who don't even want to feed hungry school children have trashed this nation. They want the homeless around to serve as a threat to any wage slave who might protest dangerous, inhumane, and soul-killing working conditions.

You don't want to be that guy...

I've been a dumpster diver at certain times in my life for various reasons, including homelessness.

When my wife started grad school we furnished our apartment with stuff that had been abandoned beside the dumpsters at the end of the school term.

At one of my kid's college the school had a formal system for redistributing all this stuff. It was astonishing what graduating classes left behind. There were microwave ovens, mini-fridges, any sort of furniture you might need, bicycles, clothing...

Maybe every community needs a place like that, but it would be a shame to deprive WalMart or Target of that business...

[BigmanPigman]

10. The manufacturers make them do it for their brand's image

I worked at Macy's in Visual/Display and I was going to call the local news since brand new leather belts were among tons of expensive items that were trashed into the dumpsters since the various manufacturers, like Calvin Klein, Bill Blass, etc would not let us even donate items to charities, thrift stores, and so on. They didn't want their products "cheapened".

When I became a teacher I lived a block away from the Ed Center and I saw brand new phonics books in the dumpster. I recognized the books since I had the same ones in my classroom at a different school. The local news said the books were "old and damaged" but they weren't, they were the district's new books purchased with our tax dollars. Each classroom had several hundred of them.