Amazon destroys millions of unsold products every year, mostly from third-party sellers

According to a recent investigation by British TV program ITV News, millions of unsold products are destroyed by Amazon in the UK every year, most of which come from third-party sellers.

At the Dunfermline fulfillment center in Scotland , the news organization's undercover reporter filmed a "destruction area" filled with boxes marked "destruction." The products included jewelry, books, electronics , masks and other new or less-used items, even expensive items such as MacBooks , iPads and Dyson hair dryers.  

According to an internal document obtained by ITV News, in one week in April this year , there were about 124,000 items with "destroy " labels in Dunfermline , of which only 28,000 were donated. A former Amazon employee told ITV : Half of these items with "destroy " labels were returned products, and the other half were new products that had not even been opened.

There is a reason why Amazon has so many unsold products. Because many third-party suppliers will choose to pay to store the goods in Amazon's distribution center when they ship, but once the products are unsalable, the merchants will face high storage fees , and the storage fees will increase over time, and the cost of discarding these products is much lower than the storage fee. Over time, Amazon warehouses have become "garbage dumps" piled up with mountains of goods .

This is not the first time that Amazon has been reported to have destroyed large quantities of products. As early as 2018, Amazon destroyed more than 3 million pounds worth of products in France . In addition, earlier this year, the German environmental organization Greenpeace discovered that in an Amazon warehouse in Germany, about one truckload of products was destroyed every week, which the environmental organization considered extremely wasteful.

In a statement to the Verge , Amazon denied that they were sending products to UK landfills, and claimed that the landfill found by ITV was actually just a recycling station , and only as a last resort would less than 1% of the products be incinerated for power generation.

In addition, Amazon also stated: We are working towards our goal of zero product disposal , and our top priority is to resell , donate to charitable organizations or recycle unsold products .

Amazon

Third-party sellers

Cargo accumulation