Amazon warehouse shocked when destroying 130,000 products / week, including MacBook, iPad and 20,000 brand new masks

A recent investigation by British news agency ITV revealed that an Amazon warehouse in Scotland destroys millions of unsold products each year.

Accordingly, ITV recorded the secret scene in the warehouse of the e-commerce giant in Dunfermline, Scotland. Footage shows a range of laptops, TVs, jewelry, headphones, books and face masks being loaded by staff into bins labeled “Destroy”.

An unnamed former Amazon employee told ITV that workers at the warehouse were assigned a weekly disposal quota of 130,000 items. This was corroborated by an internal log accessed by ITV, which showed that for 1 week in April, 124,000 items were marked as “Destroyed”. Additionally, in the same week, another 28,000 products were marked “Donate”.

The former employee added: “There’s no specific rule on what products will be destroyed. I’ve seen Dyson fans, Hoovers vacuums, even MacBooks, iPads (but not often) and A whole pack of 20,000 Covid-19 masks in their original packaging.About half of the items marked for destruction were still in their packaging while the other half were returned products. in good condition”.

An Amazon spokesperson told Business Insider that the Dunfermline warehouse handles all products marked for destruction in the entire UK. If 130,000 products is the weekly average, when multiplied, more than 6 million products are destroyed by Amazon each year. According to estimates by The Sun, these goods are worth up to $ 55 million.

ITV recorded bins labeled “Destroy” being loaded onto trucks and delivered to recycling centers and landfills. The video posted by ITV with the hashtag “Waste Amazon” has attracted 1.4 million views on Twitter.

In a separate statement to Business Insider, an Amazon spokesperson said: “The landfill ITV refers to is actually a recycling center. We are working towards our goal of zero product and Our priority is to resell, donate to charities or recycle any products that don’t sell.

No items have been sent to landfill in the UK. As a final solution, we send the products to an energy recovery facility (which captures energy from waste through various processes). However, we are working hard to keep this from happening.”

In 2019, some reporters in France discovered that Amazon destroyed more than 3 million products in just 1 year. That same year, the Mail on Sunday also sent a group of undercover reporters to another warehouse in the United Kingdom. Here, they witnessed many unsold products being moved to the “Destruction Zone”. Amazon employees then load these items onto trucks and they are taken to a waste disposal site or landfill.

An Amazon spokesperson would not comment on whether the company has changed its “Destroy” practices since then.