Re: [greenyes] Decomposition in Landfills

[Nancy Meyer Queen of All Good Things <nancy@no.address>]

It seems that while I've been worrying about people not reusing or recycling enough to keep reusable stuff out of landfills, an even bigger more disturbing practice has been going on.

Last week a weigh station clerk from a local landfill visited our classroom and told horror story after horror story of BRAND NEW items that are landfilled every day.  That's right, BRAND NEW.  It seems that whenever a store has a sidewalk sale, inventory reduction, moving sale, etc., the brand new items that do not get sold get landfilled.  This is a common practice for all the large and small retailers, including Target, Wal-Mart, K-Mart, and the like.  These stores even go so far as to hire security guards to protect the dumpsters from the public until the products can be hauled off to the landfills.  Possibly there is no economic sense in finding ways to donate it and risk the potential of people bringing it back for cash refunds.  Whatever the business decision (unfathomable as it is), it goes on EVERY DAY.  This clerk regularly sees brand new bicycles, stereos, clothing and thousands of pounds of perfectly good food that was either misdelivered or mislabeled going into the landfill.  I am sure his experience is not unique.

There are only about a dozen reasons why this practice should outrage everyone on this listserv, not to mention the public at large.

Here we sit in the richest most powerful country in the world landfilling brand new goods while our own people and much of the rest of the world go without.  How can we stop this senselessness?

NMeyer