[GreenYes] Re: Target destroys and throws out perfectly good furniture

["Megan" <meganleeker@no.address>]

Ahhh....  As you dig into this subject, I think you will find that many
manufacturers and retailers have this policy in place.  I heard a story
once that Jack Daniels made/bottled an entire batch of whiskey and
forgot to put the liquor stamp on the bottles.  A semi-truck load or
more had to be "destroyed" and disposed of.  Seriously, they had to
smash the bottles at the landfill and verify that there was no
"saleable" product that could leave the landfill.  Grocery stores do it
all the time - out dated and damaged merchandise basically goes into a
compactor to prevent scavengers from pulling out products (and suing
the store and manufacturer for faulty products). Even our local food
bank has a policy to throw away all food that is not dated, donated in
bulk, or past dated.  If I was starving, I think an old box of
mac'n'cheese would be a dream come true.  But those are the policies
and on one hand probably have some merit - on the other hand, they make
no sense at all.

I was recently talking with an REI employee.  REI, as you probably
know, has a 100% guarantee so folks could bring back the old, worn out
sneakers for a refund or replacement.  As the story was told, whatever
can't be resold at the 'garage sale' and whatever doesn't sell at the
'garage sale' is disposed of.  This particular store wasn't clear what
they were suppose to do with the stuff - certain managers would call
Goodwill to pick up what they wanted, others would put it all in the
trash.  The risk is that I could go to Goodwill, buy the old REI jacket
and return it to the store - over, and over, and over again.  The other
risk is product image - if I wear a ratty REI jacket around someone
might assume that REI only sells ratty jackets.  That's a risk, is it
real?  I don't know.  As American consumers we are obviously highly
motivated by visual advertisements, so I speculate that this is a real
risk.

So what can we do to change this trend?  Consume less?  Demand less?
Have less?  Less demand, means less supply, which means less waste?  Is
it really that "easy"?



On Jan 25, 6:06 am, "Tom Rhodes" <tom.rho...@no.address> wrote:
> Good day Maggie and all you illustrious GreenYessers,
>
> Yes, that is rather disturbing and makes me upset with some retailers.
> >
> -----Original Message-----
> From: GreenYes@no.address [mailto:GreenYes@no.address] On
>
> Behalf Of Marjorie J. Clarke, Ph.D.
> store manager was adamant that Target has a policy 1) not to sell such
> furniture, 2) to destroy this furniture before
> disposing of it.  Something to do with liability??   Can we start a
> campaign to get them to change this?   The manager said something
> illogical like, what would happen if the customer brought the piece
> back?


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