Posted:

June 22, 2021 04:33 GMT

A former facility employee revealed: “There is no logic or reason for what was destroyed: Dyson dryers, Hoover vacuum cleaners, some MacBooks and iPads.”

I found that an Amazon warehouse in Scotland (UK) destroys millions of unsold products every year ITV. As part of its investigation, British media have recorded videos inside the company’s Dunfermline warehouse, showing laptops, televisions, jewelry, headphones, books and masks being loaded into boxes marked with the word “smash”.

An anonymous former Amazon employee told ITV that warehouse workers have a weekly goal of cutting 130,000 pieces. This was confirmed by an internal note seen by the media, which showed that within a week of April, 124,000 pieces are marked as “damaged”. In the same week, only 28,000 products were tagged with the word “donation.”

“There is no logic or reason for what was destroyed: Dyson dryers, Hoover vacuum cleaners, some MacBooks and iPads. The other day, 20,000 antibacterial face masks were still in their packaging,” the former employee said, adding that half of the items marked Destroyable were still in their respective casing, while the other half was Items returned in good condition.

If the weekly average was 130,000 items, that would translate into more than six million products marked for destruction each year. In 2019, undercover journalists in France I showed That Amazon destroyed more than three million products in one year.

Zero Waste Goal

During the investigation, ITV also recorded boxes of products marked as “smash” that were loaded onto trucks and taken to recycling centers, as well as to a landfill.

For its part, a spokesperson for the e-commerce giant told the outlets that Amazon is working on not throwing things away, and that nothing is sent to a landfill in the UK. Sometimes the items are sent to facilities that incinerate rubbish as fuel to produce electricity, a more environmentally friendly practice than simply piling them in landfills or landfills, the spokesperson added.

“We are working towards the goal of no product waste, and our priority is to resell, donate to charities or recycle any unsold product,” the ITV spokesperson said.