While on YouTube I came across dumpster diving videos.
I gotta say, the more I watched, the more I realized just how much is being thrown out.
I'm talking everything from the Dollar Tree to Michaels. Walmart to Aldi.
Food, clothing, decor, office supplies.
Whole bags of produce, cases of cereal, one dumpster looked like an entire bread aisle was in there.
Cases of milk.
One store, I forget the name, two bags full of phone and I pad cases.
It's crazy how wasteful America is.
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A flock of flirting flamingos is pure, passionate, pink pandemonium-a frenetic flamingle-mangle-a discordant discotheque of delirious dancing, flamboyant feathers, and flamingo lingo.
Yep, I am trying to down size and de-materialize. I do not shop at those stores but for cheap decor for whatever, not a loss to me. Gone back to grocery shopping at farms.
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Sometimes you're the windshield, and sometimes you're the bug.
I used to do that but not for food. I have 2 down comforters that were marked as a return because the feathers came out. Christmas decorations, office supplies, other stuff. Plenty of stuff to sell at flea markets.
Always was respectful, never left a mess, never went back if asked not to, never went near a compactor.
I used to do that but not for food. I have 2 down comforters that were marked as a return because the feathers came out. Christmas decorations, office supplies, other stuff. Plenty of stuff to sell at flea markets.
Always was respectful, never left a mess, never went back if asked not to, never went near a compactor.
Been about 15 years since I last did it.
Really? I would love to hear more about this. Just trying to understand
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Sometimes you're the windshield, and sometimes you're the bug.
I think it should be criminal to throw good stuff away, especially food.
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A flock of flirting flamingos is pure, passionate, pink pandemonium-a frenetic flamingle-mangle-a discordant discotheque of delirious dancing, flamboyant feathers, and flamingo lingo.
When my brother worked at penny's auto years ago, they would throw out never used tape players ( I know showing my age) he would tear as much of the labels off and throw them out in the dumpster.
I heard that the reason that food isn't donated to food banks is because of being sued. I don't know if that is really the reason though
If you take sealed, before expired food, they generally take it.
But, then again, some states don't allow food banks, shelters, or soup kitchens to take things like deer meat or other meat from hunting.
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A flock of flirting flamingos is pure, passionate, pink pandemonium-a frenetic flamingle-mangle-a discordant discotheque of delirious dancing, flamboyant feathers, and flamingo lingo.
If you take sealed, before expired food, they generally take it.
But, then again, some states don't allow food banks, shelters, or soup kitchens to take things like deer meat or other meat from hunting.
In NH they can take the deer meat.
I used to organize socials for a society I volunteer for and homeless shelters could not take our leftover food. That was in Mass.
Ain't that ridiculous?
So much waste.
There really should not be a hungry person in this country.
Not with all the waste.
-- Edited by lilyofcourse on Sunday 2nd of December 2018 12:58:46 PM
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A flock of flirting flamingos is pure, passionate, pink pandemonium-a frenetic flamingle-mangle-a discordant discotheque of delirious dancing, flamboyant feathers, and flamingo lingo.
Here in south Texas, certified food pantries
can "glean" from huge receptions where
they have lots and lots of left over food.
Locations like the Alamadome or convention
center.
Wearing gloves, the gleaners transfer the
food to 5-gallon buckets lined with new
(therefore sterile) garbage bags. We
then take them to a central location, and
re-package the food into gallon baggies,
for freezing or donating that evening.
It's amazing how much food we were able
to salvage. Because the caterers followed
strict food safety standards, nothing was
sent to the garbage. Leafy salads were
the only thing that HAD to be distributed
that day, but even then they lasted two
or three days, because they hadn't been
"dressed", and were dry.
And should stores be allowed to donate food that would otherwise be thrown away?
Does it make anyone else mad that stores are throwing away good products, which jacks up the prices in store.
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A flock of flirting flamingos is pure, passionate, pink pandemonium-a frenetic flamingle-mangle-a discordant discotheque of delirious dancing, flamboyant feathers, and flamingo lingo.
And should stores be allowed to donate food that would otherwise be thrown away?
Does it make anyone else mad that stores are throwing away good products, which jacks up the prices in store.
I am not as concerned about the jacked up prices as I am mad about throwing away good food rather than being able to donate.
I know, but the two go hand in hand.
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A flock of flirting flamingos is pure, passionate, pink pandemonium-a frenetic flamingle-mangle-a discordant discotheque of delirious dancing, flamboyant feathers, and flamingo lingo.
We have drives here every now and then, but more during the holiday season. If I see a homeless person, I'll offer them any leftovers from lunch I might be carrying. They have always been very appreciative.
Our local H-E-Bs make it a
practice to regularly donate
bakery goods with up to a
week left on the shelf life to
local food pantries.
A major concern to me is the
waste that goes on BEFORE
the food makes it to the store.
Supermarkets regularly turn
away perfectly good produce
that doesn't look picture
perfect. I don't care if the
orange I buy has a blemish
on the peel - I'm only eating
what's inside.
And should stores be allowed to donate food that would otherwise be thrown away?
Does it make anyone else mad that stores are throwing away good products, which jacks up the prices in store.
It's a liability issue. If someone got sick from out of date food, they could sue the hand that fed them.
But most of what I've seen, the food isn't out of date.
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A flock of flirting flamingos is pure, passionate, pink pandemonium-a frenetic flamingle-mangle-a discordant discotheque of delirious dancing, flamboyant feathers, and flamingo lingo.
Our local H-E-Bs make it a practice to regularly donate bakery goods with up to a week left on the shelf life to local food pantries.
A major concern to me is the waste that goes on BEFORE the food makes it to the store. Supermarkets regularly turn away perfectly good produce that doesn't look picture perfect. I don't care if the orange I buy has a blemish on the peel - I'm only eating what's inside.
This.
So much perfectly good food being thrown out.
It's shameful.
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A flock of flirting flamingos is pure, passionate, pink pandemonium-a frenetic flamingle-mangle-a discordant discotheque of delirious dancing, flamboyant feathers, and flamingo lingo.
I think a problem is once they start giving the food away for free, people will take advantage and just pretend to need it. It's just human nature to ruin a good thing.
At a pizza place I used to work at, if we messed up a pizza we had to throw it away rather than have the privilege of taking it home. That way people didn't start messing up pizzas on purpose. Kind of the same idea.
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Was it a bad day?
Or was it a bad five minutes that you milked all day?
Misshapen, odd colored or sized, whatever, it gets put into small bags for 99 cents.
It may have 3 pounds of potatoes, or 4 apples, or its cabbage that was cut too close.
It's all 99 cents.
But other stores will just throw that away.
Take bananas.
There's something like 800 types, but the most popular by purchase are the ones most pleasing to the eye.
And all of them are good.
But if it isn't the right color, shape, or size, it gets tossed.
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A flock of flirting flamingos is pure, passionate, pink pandemonium-a frenetic flamingle-mangle-a discordant discotheque of delirious dancing, flamboyant feathers, and flamingo lingo.
I think a problem is once they start giving the food away for free, people will take advantage and just pretend to need it. It's just human nature to ruin a good thing.
At a pizza place I used to work at, if we messed up a pizza we had to throw it away rather than have the privilege of taking it home. That way people didn't start messing up pizzas on purpose. Kind of the same idea.
My best friend had a funny brother and a crabby sister. She worked at a pizza place. He'd call up and order pizzas for pick up. Then not go. The crabby sister then brought the pizzas home. We still laugh about it.
I used to do that but not for food. I have 2 down comforters that were marked as a return because the feathers came out. Christmas decorations, office supplies, other stuff. Plenty of stuff to sell at flea markets.
Always was respectful, never left a mess, never went back if asked not to, never went near a compactor.
Been about 15 years since I last did it.
Really? I would love to hear more about this. Just trying to understand
Sorry it has taken so long to respond.
Like I said, I never did food. Well, almost never. There were a few things that I took that were food. I stuck to places like Linens & Things, Bed, Bath and Beyond, Staples, AC Moore, Michael, etc. DH and I would head out after the stores closed and employees left for the night, usually around 10-11:00. We figured out what nights were bid drop nights. On two different occasions, at 2 different locations, we found king size down comforters in the dumpster, tagged as a return to the store. Both return slips stated reason for return was feathers were coming out. Well, that is natural with down comforters or pillows. There was nothing wrong with either one. We kept one and gave the other as a present to DB.
Now, DB was still doing DDiving right up until he moved to Florida. No clue if he still is or not. He would do it for food too. He knew when the stores would dump, took temperatures of stuff that would have been refridgerated - mostly packaged cheeses, never any meat unless it was a smoked product like kielbasa, took produce that looked good still and gave his chickens stuff that was starting to wilt. Granola bars were a big item he would find too. And the amounts of chocolate and candy that he took home was insane! Bags and bags sof it. Coffee was another item that he found in large quantities. Everything was still sealed and at least half of it was still in the sell-by period.
When DB moved, he gave me several large boxes of stuff - some store bought, some from diving. Since I did not know what was what, the majority of it was thrown out.
Definitely not a Manson family here. It supplemented our income at the time enough that we were able to take a decent camping vacation every year for a few years. Which was needed as we were living paycheck to paycheck as well as living with my ILs.
What do you think about stores destroying good products before throwing them away?
In a lot of the videos, stores will cut things, spray clothing and bedding with paint, use sharpie on them.
USB cables, chargers, and any other wires are cut.
In a BB&B dumpster were 2 really nice quilted covers, both had red paint on them.
The same dumpster had a set of curtains, what looked like a case of towels, and some throw rugs, all with red paint.
A children's clothing store had wrote all over blankets, jumpers, and onsies with sharpie.
Shoes from another store were all cut.
I think it's shamefull.
Ulta dumpster had unopened morphe and urban decay kits, lipstains, liners, whole bottles of make up, and jars of moisturizer.
I know that stuff ain't cheap.
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A flock of flirting flamingos is pure, passionate, pink pandemonium-a frenetic flamingle-mangle-a discordant discotheque of delirious dancing, flamboyant feathers, and flamingo lingo.
I think the amount of waste and dunnecessary destruction of good is disgusting. Donate it instead of trashing it. There aree plenty of shelters, thrift stores that benefit the community, etc, that it could be sold at a discount. Why waste the product?
Panera Bread donates their stock to food banks and shelters. Why can't other organizations do the same?
Wasn't there recently, a major designer, who burned all the out of season stock? Burberry, I think. Millions of dollars of product just wasted.
