Why Do Stores Throw Away Perfectly Good Products?

Summary

---

Podcast Summary: The Wirecutter Show

Episode Title: Why Do Stores Throw Away Perfectly Good Products?
Date: May 13, 2026
Host: Rosie Guerin
Guest: Annemarie Conti, Wirecutter Deputy Editor

---

Episode Overview

This episode dives into the surprising, often hidden world of retail waste—specifically, why stores routinely discard perfectly good, unused products. Guest Annemarie Conti shares insights from her latest investigation, including shadowing dumpster-diving influencers in Texas and New York, analyzing the environmental costs of consumer waste, and exploring why efforts to resell, donate, or recycle at scale are still the exception rather than the rule. The episode uncovers what’s happening in the “secondary market” for goods and brings attention to both the thrill and tragedy of what gets trashed.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Hidden Life of Products After the Shelf

• Rosie introduces Annemarie’s reporting as a continuation of earlier work investigating Amazon returns pallets.
• Disconnect between consumer experiences (shopping/returning) and what actually happens to unsold or returned goods ([04:25], [05:24]).
• The “secondary market” for goods is described as "the Wild West"—unregulated and evolving ([06:04]).

Dumpster Diving as Investigation

• Annemarie traveled to Dallas–Fort Worth (a hotspot for dumpster-diving influencers) and New York to see what’s actually thrown out ([06:43]).
• Shadowed three influencers: Tiffany Roach (“Dumpster Diving Mama”) and Ella Rose (“Glamour D Dive”) in Texas, and Anna Sachs (“Trash Walker”) in New York ([10:51]).
• Observed differences in garbage culture between cities:
  • Texas: Dedicated retail dumpsters, surprisingly clean, fast-paced, competitive.
  • New York: Street trash bags, messier, slower, more mixed waste ([13:44], [17:11]).

Memorable Dumpster Finds

• Typical “hauls” include apparel, toys, a slashed dog bed, jewelry (like a heart-shaped necklace with a large carbon footprint), and brand-name items (Coach hat and scarf, etc.) ([17:44], [18:44]).
• Some items are intentionally destroyed but not entirely—employees might “half-heartedly” slash things in hopes they’ll be rescued ([17:44]).
• Notably disgusting: “Souping” by beauty retailers—dumping liquids over products or cutting cords to render them unsellable ([20:07]).

The Legality and Ethics of Dumpster Diving

• Dumpster diving exists in a legal gray area—generally permissible if not marked as trespassing or locked ([09:43]).
• Journalists can observe but not keep items ([08:49], [10:34]).

Economics of Retail Waste

• Influencers resell finds via garage sales or online; for some, this is a full-time job ([22:21]).
• "Waste is not a byproduct… it's part of the business model"—retailers budget for loss as routine ([26:17], [26:34]).
• Overproduction is structurally incentivized: “The opportunity cost of overproducing is more important than the potential loss by under producing” ([29:22]).
• Some discarded goods are overstock, damaged, or “unsellable” simply due to condition or minor damage ([28:23], [29:16]).

The Environmental Impact

• Life cycle assessments (via Earthster) reveal that production and shipping of even small, light items (e.g., jewelry) have disproportionately high carbon footprints, especially when they’re just thrown away ([18:44]).
• True costs (environmental, social, financial) of waste rarely considered at the point of discard ([27:40], [30:15]).

Donation & Recycling Challenges

• Recycling is limited by mixed materials and lack of infrastructure; innovation is mainly around textiles but still not enough ([31:28]).
• Thrift/donation infrastructure is also overwhelmed; even thrift stores dump usable goods ([32:05]).

Paths Forward and Glimmers of Hope

• Some brands (e.g., Coach with “Reloved” and “Coachtopia”) are experimenting with circularity programs—using scraps, buybacks, redesigns ([33:22]).
• In the EU, new laws require companies to inventory and plan for end-of-life products ([34:41]).
• U.S. businesses less regulated but some sustainability teams making progress.

Consumer Responsibility and Mindset

• Annemarie emphasizes mindfulness at purchase—resisting impulse buys, seeking repairs, using second-hand goods, and following “reduce, reuse, recycle” hierarchy ([35:41]).
• Encourages extending the usable life of products and supporting buyback/repair programs ([35:50]).

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the thrill of dumpster diving:
  “It's like a giant claw machine, right?...And the idea of rescuing something that otherwise would have ended up gone forever is really addictive.”
  — Annemarie Conti [25:42]

• On the business model of waste:
  “Waste is not a byproduct of manufacturing and retail. It's part of the business model.”
  — Annemarie Conti [26:34]

• On retail overproduction:
  “The opportunity cost of overproducing is more important than the potential loss by under producing.”
  — Annemarie Conti [29:22]

• On the emotional impact of reporting:
  “When I reported the Palate story in November, I was in a ball... What I actually found was hope.”
  — Annemarie Conti [33:22]

---

Essential Timestamps

• 04:25–06:31: Overview of Annemarie’s reporting, secondary market discussion
• 06:43–10:41: Dumpster diving process, legality
• 13:44–17:42: Firsthand experience in Texas vs New York
• 17:44–18:44: Breakdown of actual finds; impact assessments
• 20:07–21:53: “Souping” and product destruction
• 22:21–22:56: Dumpster diving as a business/influencer model
• 25:42–26:34: The addictive nature of dumpster diving; waste as business model
• 29:22–30:44: Retail logic behind overstock
• 33:22–34:41: Hopeful brand initiatives and EU regulations
• 35:41–37:14: Practical consumer advice

---

Takeaways & Actionable Advice

• For Consumers: Mind your purchasing habits at checkout, seek repairs or buy secondhand, and understand the environmental impact behind everyday items.
• For Brands/Retailers: There is room—and growing pressure—for better end-of-life product management and circular systems.
• For Policy: Europe is moving ahead with requiring accountability for unsold goods; the U.S. is lagging but could follow.
• For All: Awareness is the first step—most of these dynamics happen out of sight, and investigative journalism helps illuminate the scope and stakes of retail waste.

---

To explore more and see visuals from Annemarie’s reporting, find the linked article “Why Do Stores Throw Away Perfectly Good Products?” at The Wirecutter Show website.

---

Transcript

[Apple Card Advertiser]

This message is brought to you by Apple Card Spring always feels like a reset, clearing things out, simplifying what you don't need. Apple Card is built with that same idea in mind. No annual fee, no late fees, and no foreign transaction fees. No fees, period. Get started and apply in the Wallet app on your iPhone today. Subject to credit approval. Variable APRs for Apple Card range from 17.49% to 27.74% based on creditworthiness rates as of January 1, 2026. Existing customers can view their Variable APR in the Wallet app [e-mail] Apple Card issue by Goldman Sachs Bank USA Salt Lake City Branch terms and more at applecar.com.

[Annemarie Conti]

They leave their cars running. So they are pulling up to the dumpster, they're popping open the lid, they're looking inside. If they see something good, they'll pull it out. And if they don't, they are back in the car and they move on.

[Rosie Guerin]

I'm Rosie Guerin and you're listening to the Wirecutter Show. Hey, it's Rosie. My guest today is Annemarie Conti. She's a deputy editor and my colleague here at Wirecutter. Annemarie just wrote a piece all about something I think probably most people wouldn't consider doing, but that some folks do for a living. Dumpster diving. The article is called why Do Stores Throw Away so Many Perfectly Good Products? I went dumpster diving to find out. The piece is a continuation of Ann Marie's reporting on waste in consumer goods. At the end of last year she wrote a very popular article all about how she bought a nearly 500 pound mystery pallet of returned items from Amazon. Then she investigated what was inside, all in an effort to better understand the image impact of returns at a large scale. Turns out a lot of those goods end up being resold on the secondary market for pennies on the dollar, also known as liquidation. The dumpster diving story is asking a similar question. What happens to unwanted items that have been on store shelves, but this time they end up in the trash? Emery flew to Texas, walked the streets of New York to investigate how much is being thrown away, whether the, quote, trash is actually and why it isn't being sold, recycled or donated at scale. We're going to get into it after the break and hear all about what Annemarie found in the dumpsters. We'll be right back.

[Apple Card Advertiser]

This message is brought to you by Apple Card. Spring always feels like a reset, clearing things out, simplifying what you don't need. Apple Card is built with that same idea in mind. No annual fee, no late fees, and no foreign transaction fees. No no fees. Period. Get started and apply in the Wallet app on your iPhone today. Subject to credit approval. Variable APRs for Apple Card range from 17.49% to 27.74% based on creditworthiness rates as of January 1, 2026. Existing customers can view their Variable APR in the Wallet app [e-mail] Apple Card issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA Salt Lake City Branch terms and [e-mail] this

[Squarespace Advertiser]

podcast is supported by Squarespace. Squarespace is the all in one website platform designed to help you stand out and succeed online. They give you everything you need, offer services and get paid all in one place. And with their collection of cutting edge design tools, anyone can build a beautiful professional online presence that perfectly fits their brand or business. Head to squarespace.com NYT for a free trial and when you're ready to launch, use offer code NYT to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.

[Chase Sapphire Advertiser]

This is the Chase Sapphire Lounge at Boston Logan. You got clam chowder in New York, dirty martini over 1300 airport lounges, and one card that gets you in Chase Sapphire Reserve. Now even more rewarding.

[Liberty Mutual Advertiser]

Learn [e-mail] Sapphire Reserve cards issued by JP Morgan, Chase bank and a member FDIC subject to credit approval.

[Rosie Guerin]

Welcome back. Today My guest is Wirecutter's Deputy Editor, AnneMarie Conti. Annemarie, welcome back. Hello.

[Annemarie Conti]

Oh my gosh. I'm so excited to be here with my favorite people at Wirecutter. Don't tell anyone.

[Rosie Guerin]

I've been looking forward to this conversation for a variety of reasons. First, because I really love getting to hear about all of your adventures, but also because you and I, we talked about how this article is in some ways or it feels like a continuation of the conversation you and I had back in January about your piece titled we bought a £450 mystery palette packed with return goods from Amazon and beyond. Here's what we found inside that was a banger.

[Annemarie Conti]

It was so fun.

[Rosie Guerin]

That was a banger.

[Annemarie Conti]

It was so fun and the audience, you know, really reacted very positively to it. And it was something that I think surprised so many people and surprised me as I was reporting it.

[Rosie Guerin]

If folks didn't get a chance to listen to that episode, it's worth checking out. Obviously worth reading your piece as well. I want to know what you see as the connective tissue between that story and this story.

[Annemarie Conti]

Both things are hidden from most People, I think that a lot of people, when they're going about their day and they're shopping and they're returning something, they don't think about what happens to it after it leaves their hands. And they don't think about the stuff that's on the store shelves. What happens to if it doesn't get sold. And so both of those topics are ways to explore this secondary market. What happens to the goods after they sort of leave your site is something that I fascinated by this idea of

[Rosie Guerin]

the secondary market being the great beyond for products.

[Annemarie Conti]

One of my sources called it the Wild West. And I think that's also something, as a journalist, that's really interesting to me. How is this relatively unregulated, unmodulated, constantly evolving product handling logistics piece? How does it exist? What is happening now, and how does it affect our readers and our planet and our wallets?

[Rosie Guerin]

Yeah, we're gonna get into a lot of that. All right, so walk me through this reporting. What did you do and why?

[Annemarie Conti]

I started by shadowing dumpster diver influencers. So these are people who are on the Internet every day. They're posting to social media, and they are showcasing exactly what they're finding in these dumpst. Apparently, Dallas Fort Worth is a hotbed of dumpster diving influencer culture. And there are several people out there who are friends and have gotten to know each other. And so I flew out to the Dallas Fort Worth area and shadowed two dumpster divers there. And then I also wanted to understand what it was like in New York City because that's an entirely different animal. So I also shadowed she calls herself the Trash walker, because New York does not have dumpsters in the same way that the strip mall heaven that is Dallas Fort Worth. And so those were two very different experiences for me. And then I took the products that we found and we did environmental lifecycle assessments of them. We tried to understand if they actually had resale value. And then I tried to dig into why these companies were continuing to throw away products despite the fact that that these influencers are shaming them on a daily basis and saying, look at everything we found. Look at all of this stuff and why this practice continues. And there have been cases where companies have responded and said, okay, we are not gonna do this anymore. This is your right. And there are others that, you know, we reached out to every company that I mentioned in the article, and most of them sort of just had a very generic statement about how they support the environment. And so I think that that's really interesting to Me too. About the reactions of these companies and the companies that are trying to control the waste and others that sort of just assume that it's part of their business model and continue on. So what.

[Rosie Guerin]

What did you do? Were you really legs flailing in the air, head down in a dumpster? What did you do? What'd you find out?

[Annemarie Conti]

It turns out I don't have the upper body strength for that, number one. But our legal team was very careful to. You know, as a journalist, I can experience these things. I can witness these things. I did not. The things that we took out of the dumpster do not belong to me and do not belong to Wirecutter. Those were things that were found by the people that I was shadowing, and those items go back to them. Okay, so that was something that was very important to us. In the course of my reporting, I was witnessing this. Yes. Sometimes I did try to get a closer look, and I was in a little bit. But for me to interact with those products, it was very much something that belonged to the three women that I was following. And do you wanna hear a little bit about the legality of dumpster diving? Are you interested in this?

[Rosie Guerin]

I am, if only because it seems like it potentially could be a little bit gray, a little shady.

[Annemarie Conti]

It is gray. But in general, unless there's a specific ordinance against it. So there are certain municipalities or town that say that you may not remove trash from a waste bin. If you are not walking past a no trespassing sign or you are not cutting a lock or going through something that is locked, then it's pretty permissible because it no longer belongs to the person who has thrown it in the dumpster. And it might technically belong to the waste management company, but even that's a bit of a gray area. And so in general, it's not illegal. And in the places where it is illegal, potentially there's a fine connected to it. And as a journalist, I can actually witness something that is illegal.

[Rosie Guerin]

You just can't participate.

[Annemarie Conti]

I just can't participate in it. But in this case, it was all sort of above board. You know, we didn't do anything that was illegal.

[Rosie Guerin]

Talk a little bit about the folks you worked with, the folks that you shadowed. You mentioned the trash walker. I know the trash walker was in New York.

[Annemarie Conti]

Yes.

[Rosie Guerin]

What about the folks in Texas?

[Annemarie Conti]

So the two women in Texas who I followed are Tiffany. Tiffany Roach, and she goes by Dumpster Diving Mama and Ella Rose, and she goes by Glamour D Dive. Both of them have been dumpster diving for nine Years, like, almost a decade. And they met each other just by crossing paths on the circuit. You know, like, they kind of have their own territories. Dallas Fort Worth is very widespread, and so they generally operate in separate circles and then sometimes will cross paths. So I didn't realize that all three of these dumpster divers were fully connected until I was thinking about the story of these coach bags in 2021. So Ella Rose Glamour D Dive found a stash of slashed Coach bags behind a Coach outlet. So these are leather bags. These are the bags that have the, like, classic canvas Coach logoing, and they have literally been cut through by an employee to. So that they can't be usable anymore. The zippers are broken. It was over a dozen bags and

[Rosie Guerin]

shoes, ostensibly in otherwise fine shape.

[Annemarie Conti]

Yes. Right. And so. And often that's what happens. Something will have a smudge on it or might have, like, a little bit of a tear, and that's when they get tossed. So Glamour Dee Dive found a stash. And then the next day, I believe Tiffany Roach, who goes by Dumpster Diving Mama, she found a stash. And so Tiffany posted this video where she was like, I can't believe this. This is craz crazy. Anna Sachs, the Trash Walker, saw that video over in New York and said, I will buy all of these destroyed Coach bags. And so she did. Tiffany sent them to her. And Anna is the one who posted a video that went viral and caused Coach to say, okay. The official statement was, we will no longer do this practice. Which is to be fully clear this. So many companies do this. This is not an anomaly. Coach was not alone. But Coach was the one that said, we're not gonna do this anymore. And we are going to cycle this into our circularity program. So if somebody returns a bag that Coach deems unsellable, for whatever reason, it can get remade or it can get refurbished and resold so that it doesn't end up in the dumpster.

[Rosie Guerin]

Wow.

[Annemarie Conti]

Yeah. And so that. That, to me, was a really interesting tale, and it really connected all three of the divers who I was following.

[Rosie Guerin]

So you go to Texas with Aubrey from our video team. We love Aubrey. What is a typical day in this reporting trip? What are you doing when you wake up? What are you seeing? What are you smelling? How do you meet Tiffany and Ella? Paint me a picture.

[Annemarie Conti]

I think Aubrey and I were both initially very surprised at how cool this process is. Aubrey and I were in our rental car. We were following Tiffany in her car. Ella had a separate car because they often don't dumpster dive Together for the sake of the story and to really show me around. They had crossed their territories for our sake. Dumpster diving is competitive, and not everybody's an influencer, right? So we had this woman that was like five steps ahead of us. And so twice she got there first. It's her claim. We saw her pulling the bags out and then she was gone. And it was like, well, that was the story that we wanted. But it was so fast moving, like Aubrey could barely get her camera out by the time we got out of the car. They leave their cars running. So they are pulling up to the dumpster, they're popping open the lid. They're looking inside. If they see something good, they'll pull it out. And if they don't, they are back in the car and they move on. And they know internally in their heads exactly which dumpsters they're gonna go to. And so they'll say, oh, yeah, maybe we'll go to this shopping complex next. Or maybe we'll, you know, we haven't hit this place. And the thing that really I didn't understand until I experienced it is they could be checking the same dumpster multiple times a day. You never know when an employee's gonna throw out some trash. And they have notes that they keep where they say, okay, I think this day is trash day. So there were a few times where the trash had already been picked up. And so we missed it. We missed it by minutes. And there was. Both Tiffany and Ella's husbands will look for them as well. So what happened on one of the days is Ella's husband said he was driving to work, and he said, I think the TJ Maxx dumpster is full. And she grabbed a couple bags for us. So we didn't physically see her pull those bags from the trash, but she showed up with them in her trunk, and we were able to go through them. And so that, to me is. It was like very much like a team effort. It feels really exciting. There's like, the highs are high and the lows are low. And you're checking the dumpster and then you're moving on and you're driving around and you're, you know, it was very fast paced. And New York, in contrast, was slow because New York doesn't have dumpsters. They put all of their trash at store closing. So the store closes at 8 or 9pm and then the employees will put the trash on the curb. And we walked from spot to spot because it's not really easy to drive around in the city. And so that was slower, dirtier. The trash was much more mixed in. I think the thing that people do not understand is dumpsters are surprisingly clean. The dumpster, how, how it shocked me too. There's no food waste in there or there's minimal food waste. The dumpsters that are behind malls and strip malls are dedicated to the store. So if you have a store like you're not gonn through the five Guys dumpster, that is a crazy idea because that's gonna be filled with food waste, right? But the TJ Maxx dumpster, the Marshalls dumpster, the Dollar Store dumpster, those are gonna be filled with mostly packaging, Styrofoam, plastic, that kind of thing. Sometimes display units and sometimes product waste.

[Rosie Guerin]

And in contrast, New York is not like that.

[Annemarie Conti]

I was so naive, Like I was not prepared for the mixed trash, the smells. People just throw their food waste in with everything else. And it's like so many Duncan cups, like one million Duncan cups. That was a bit of a rude awakening for me and also so important for me to have experienced both aspects of this. I'm so glad that I did that second trash walk so that I did not make assumptions about what it's like everywhere.

[Rosie Guerin]

What'd you pull out?

[Annemarie Conti]

Oh, my goodness. It's a lot of chach. It's a lot of tchotchke. But there was stuff like apparel, children's toys, a soccer ball, a dog bed that had a slash through the bottom. So the bottom of the bed, the fabric on the bottom was cut through. And the suspicion is that sometimes the employees are being told to destroy things, but they'll like, just destroy it a little bit. Right. In hopes that it can be reclaimed. You know, we don't know that firsthand, but I think it is really hard on these retail employees to be smashing mugs and picture frames and things that really could be used again. Ella had found, just before we got there, she found a coach hat and scarf. New in box. She found two beautiful. A silver necklace and a gold plated necklace. Just all sorts of stuff. All sorts of really interesting stuff. And what's interesting is that we did the lifecycle assessments.

[Rosie Guerin]

Yeah, talk about that.

[Annemarie Conti]

Yeah. So sustainability experts will do these estimates to try to understand the impact of producing these products and shipping these products and the whole life cycle of these products, how long they are used for, all of that. So. So I worked with a company called Earthster, and they use AI to create these assessments for businesses. So their intention is to help a business reduce their footprint. They were trying to help US understand what it took to get these products produced and brought to the US in most cases and put on the store shelves just for it to get thrown out. To me, that is wild. So the necklace, which was the lightest object, the smallest object, involved metal mining. It involved air freight because it's a light, small item. So it likely wasn't shipped, it was likely flown. And that just has a huge carbon footprint and a big impact on the environment. So our lightest object also had one of our largest carbon footprints. And for it to just get thrown out and not be able to be used. Anyone would love to have this like little heart shaped necklace. That's delightful.

[Rosie Guerin]

Yeah. What was the ickiest, strangest, bizarrest thing you found in the dumpster?

[Annemarie Conti]

I know I just spent a long time telling you how clean the dumpsters were in Texas, and they were. For a large part, however, there is something called souping. It seems to happen with the beauty chain Ulta. They will take product testers returned goods. Anything that they're trying to get rid of will go into a trash bag and then they cover it in liquid water foundation and it creates disgusting soup. And so we put on our rubber gloves and went through it and they will reclaim some of that stuff. They will clean it. There are sometimes beauty products that are still sealed and in packaging. And so they will take it and they will clean it and make use of it. But that was definitely, I think, the grossest. And we also found soup products in New York as well. So behind in Ulta as well, they had also cut the cords of hair tools. And I tried to understand. I contacted the hair tool company to say, why is this happening? Is this something that you're dictating or is this something that Ulta is doing on their own? And they basically referred me back to Ulta and Ulta did not respond to our request for comment. So that to me is fascinating. And Tiffany's husband will actually repair the cords on the cut tools and they will clean it up and they will resell them, which that's gonna void the warranty. And if you try to do it yourself and you don't know about electrical, maybe not the best idea, but it's something that she does.

[Rosie Guerin]

Is it soup on the outside and in the inside of these bags?

[Annemarie Conti]

The bag is clean on the outside. So you're pulling a clean bag that is filled with liquid and grossness.

[Rosie Guerin]

I get the impression that the chance of finding these huge hauls where you're going to a dumpster and you're finding tons of valuable resellable items is fairly low. Number one, is that fair to say? And number two, if that's true, what reasons are Tiffany and Ella giving you for doing this?

[Annemarie Conti]

It's not low. It just takes work. So I got a peek into Ella's storage units and they were full of stuff that she's reselling. Just to see it in accumulation is really astounding. So you may find a few things a day, you may find a couple of bags of things today, but then when you have enough, you know they'll sell it on Facebook Marketplace. Tiffany has a garage sale a few times a year. She'll sell these items about 75% off. So first of all, they make a living off of this, right?

[Rosie Guerin]

This is their full time job.

[Annemarie Conti]

This is their full time job. So they not only make money from the views on social media, but they also make money from selling the products. And they really do feel passionately that they want to illuminate eliminate this waste that is happening.

[Rosie Guerin]

I want to hear some more specifics about what you found in these dumpsters and I also want to hear about how retailers are thinking about or not thinking about the issue of retail waste. So we'll be right back.

[Apple Card Advertiser]

This message is brought to you by AppleCard. Spring always feels like a reset, clearing things out, simplifying what you don't need. Apple Card is built with that same idea in mind. No annual fee, no late fees, and no foreign transaction fees. No fees, period. Get started and apply in the Wallet app on your iPhone today. Subject to credit approval. Variable APRs for Apple Card range from 17.49% to 27.74% based on creditworthiness rates as of January 1, 2026. Existing customers can view their variable APR in the Wallet app [e-mail] Apple Car issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA Salt Lake City Branch terms and [e-mail] this

[BetterHelp Advertiser]

podcast is supported by BetterHelp. May is mental Health Awareness Month, a reminder that you don't have to do this life alone. Right now, many Americans are struggling. Nearly two thirds report feeling anxious and more than half cite financial stress. Having a licensed therapist with you by video phone or chat can make a difference. And BetterHelp makes it easy. Sign up now and get 10% [e-mail] New York Times that's betterhelp.com New York

[Chase Sapphire Advertiser]

Times the new strawberry Watermelon refresher is now at McDonald's. It's made with strawberries and a whole lot of whimsy. It's one of many new drinks now at McDonald's. Refreshers contain caffeine.

[Rosie Guerin]

Welcome back. My guest today is my colleague, a deputy editor here at Wirecutter, Ann Marie Conti. And we have been talking about Ann Marie's recent trip through the dumpsters.

[Annemarie Conti]

Fair to say a deep dive, as

[Rosie Guerin]

they say, deep dive. One of the first things you wrote in this piece was how much you enjoyed the process of dumpster diving and that it was, quote, addictive. So I'm having trouble wrapping my head around how that can be the case.

[Annemarie Conti]

I didn't understand it until I experienced it. I mean, the bottom line is it's like free stuff. And there is definitely the dopamine hit that comes with getting free stuff. And the fall when you don't see anything. But it's basically like a giant claw machine, right? Like you're popping it open if you see something, especially if something is out of reach, and then you grab your grabber tool and you take it and then you throw it in your car and you get out of there and you're. And the idea of rescuing something that otherwise would have ended up gone forever is really addictive. But I'm not gonna force you to dumpster dive.

[Rosie Guerin]

Don't make me go. For me. I think the most powerful sentence in your article is this quote. Waste is not a byproduct of manufacturing and retail. It's part of the business model. Can you tell me what you meant by that?

[Annemarie Conti]

As much as companies say that they are trying to think about the end of life of their products, the idea that there will be loss of product, whether it is because it gets broken accidentally or because they are destroying it themselves, is part of most companies corporate model. That, to me, is the really sad part of this. Most companies, I don't want to paint all companies with a broad brush. There are plenty of companies that are trying their best here, and there are a lot of sustainability teams in these large corporations who are trying to create change. But at the end of the day, this is the system that they're working in. It is cheaper to throw out some of this stuff than to find a place for it to go.

[Rosie Guerin]

And you could quibble about the word cheaper, right? Fiscally, ethically, sustainability wise. You know, there are. It's.

[Annemarie Conti]

Yeah, that's what I wanted to explore in this piece is really what is the cost? What is the environmental cost? What is the financial cost of these items and everything that goes into them for them to never get used and just get thrown out?

[Rosie Guerin]

So a product you might Find in a dumpster. It could be damaged in some way and deemed unsellable. It could have been defective in some way and deemed unsellable. Correct me if I'm wrong, but there are perfectly fine good items that are

[Annemarie Conti]

actually just overstock, often overstock. You know, like what I found with the pallet. When we were in that liquidation warehouse, we saw an entire pallet full of new in box Lego from Target. And that that was overstock that was liquidated and sold for pennies on the dollar and ended up in that warehouse for a reseller to purchase and resell. But if there's one damaged Lego box, there isn't quite a flow for it. So that might end up in the dumpster. Not too long ago, one of our dumpster divers found a bunch of Lego that was. There was like writing on the side that said flood. So the boxes got wet and they're not going to liquidate that. So they threw it in the trash and she found it and resold it.

[Rosie Guerin]

Let's speak about the overstock for a second. Why is there so much overproduction happening?

[Annemarie Conti]

What I was told by one of my sources is that the opportunity cost of overproducing is more important than the potential loss by under producing. So companies don't want to end up sold out because then they have lost potential sales. So they're going to overproduce by a margin in order to ensure that they have enough. And I think if you want to be a little less nefarious about it, like, like a lot of these companies are producing things a year in advance. They don't know what the response should be to these items. So sometimes they miss the mark, they overproduce and sometimes they under produce and their goal is probably to hit the correct number, but they would rather go over than under.

[Rosie Guerin]

When I think about this process of doing the life cycle assessment, my brain immediately went to Pixar movie like what is this little piece of an I love you mom mug that ended up in a dumpster in Fort Worth? What is the process from ideation all the way to it ending up in a landfill somewhere? The reality is you can't chart that entire process. Is that true?

[Annemarie Conti]

Only the companies themselves can chart that. And even that with getting materials. And you know, I think the thing that people really don't understand is how many different parts there are of this process to get the materials, to get the production, to get all of that together. It's so many different small decisions and steps. I would love to watch that movie I would probably sob as hard as I did at Toy Story.

[Rosie Guerin]

It would be sad.

[Annemarie Conti]

It would be sad. But that's really something that only the brands and manufacturers know.

[Rosie Guerin]

What infrastructure is in place for actual proper recycling of unwanted or unsellable goods. And why is this not lucrative? Big business.

[Annemarie Conti]

Yeah. Part of it is that you can't recycle items that often have mixed materials with clothing recycling. It's a growing business. People are trying to create technology and infrastructure to help support textile recycling. But ultimately this is a story of overproduction and we can't recycle our way out of this.

[Rosie Guerin]

What infrastructure is in place in terms of donation? Or is that also kind of a wild west one off situation?

[Annemarie Conti]

Some donation is very effective. I think it's also fairly common that these secondary sellers are overwhelmed and so they are often throwing out product too. Anna Sachs in New York told me that some of her best finds come from thrift store garbage.

[Rosie Guerin]

Wow.

[Annemarie Conti]

So it just always comes back to an overproduction problem.

[Rosie Guerin]

Okay, so it's not financial worth it for the companies to recycle or donate unwanted or unsellable items all the time.

[Annemarie Conti]

Right. So they do this to some extent, and I don't want to give the impression that they don't, but there's still excess. Even despite efforts to donate or recycle, if they are, there's still excess.

[Rosie Guerin]

And it takes a lot of effort to dive into these dumpsters. Finding, then reselling or occasionally repairing these items. This problem of waste continues to grow year over year. Products are increasingly expensive to produce. Why aren't you in a ball? Sobbing

[Annemarie Conti]

it's so interesting because when I reported the Palate story in November, I was in a ball with this. What I actually found was hope. And I think that there are a lot of different ways from the dumpster divers who are doing this in their communities on a very small scale, to companies that are attempting to make these efforts to create circularity. That's when you don't have excess in the manufacturing process and you're taking scrap material and you are cycling it back into your products. A really good example is Coach. So they are using leather scrap from their manufacturing process to create new bags. They have a program called Reloved, where they take bags that are bought back by them and they will refurbish them or they will redesign them. And then they have a second line called Coachtopia, which is where they take these leather scraps and they create bags out of those. So there are efforts being made by some companies to create A closed system so that they there isn't excess waste. And I think there are people that are doing things like that all over. And the EU just created a law, so it's not happening in the us but the European Union is making efforts to one inventory how much excess product these companies have. So this is focused on medium and large companies and to create an end of life plan for these products so they're not allowed to just ship them out to another country and dump them. They need to figure out how to create more circularity in their processes so that we are not creating mountains of waste.

[Rosie Guerin]

I know, Annemarie, that you're careful about not implying that the problem of waste is a problem for individuals to solve. I do wonder though, what do you think we can be doing or what can we be mindful of when buying, returning, or disposing of the stuff in our lives?

[Annemarie Conti]

I think about that checkout gauntlet that a lot of stores have, which is basically like your impulse purchase, Hellscape.

[Rosie Guerin]

Oh, I'm weak.

[Annemarie Conti]

I think that it is just trying to be more mindful of what you're purchasing. And when I do a lot of thrift shopping, I also have realized that there are more of these buyback programs or repair programs. I just dropped three pieces of clothing at Patagonia for repair for free. One of which I thrifted. I thrifted a jacket. The zipper broke. They repaired it on the spot. They put a new zipper in that jacket for me and I walked out with essentially like a completely usable jacket. And then there were two other items that they sent out for repair. Just getting more longevity out of those items. And then, you know, I'm not gonna tell you not to like buy things that delight you, but just be a little bit more careful about what you are bringing into your home and what you are purchasing. And not thinking about items as disposable because at the end of the day, everything ends up in the trash. Reduce, reuse, recycle is an order of operations, right? Don't buy in excess. Reuse what you can, either your own goods or by purchasing previously loved things and then recycling if and when you can.

[Rosie Guerin]

So are you on trash beat? Is this your job now?

[Annemarie Conti]

I would really like my next story to be about puppies or candy or.

[Rosie Guerin]

Thanks for joining me, Anne Marie. This is always so fun. If you want to see Annemarie on her quest diving in these dumpsters, there's a ton of video, amazing images and graphics on our website. The piece is called why Do Stores Throw Away so many perfect, perfectly good products. I went dumpster diving to find out. And we'll link the story in our show notes. That's it for us. We'll see you next week. Peace. The Wirecutter show is executive produced by me, Rosie Guerin, and produced by Abigail Keel. Engineering support from Maddie Mazziello and Nick Pittman. Today's episode was mixed by Katherine and Anderson. Original music by Dan Powell, Marion Lozano, Alicia Etoupe, Rowan Namisto, Katherine Anderson and Diane Wong. Cliff Levy is Wirecutter's deputy publisher and general manager. Ben Fruman is Wirecutter's editor in chief. And I'm Rosie Guerin. Thank you for listening. Should we just dive in? Dive in.

[Liberty Mutual Advertiser]

And, Doug, there's nowhere I wouldn't go to help someone customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual. Even if it means sitting front row at a comedy show.

[Rosie Guerin]

Hey, everyone. Check out this guy and his bird.

[Annemarie Conti]

What is this, your first date? Oh, no.

[Liberty Mutual Advertiser]

We help people customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual together. We're married. Me to a human, him to a bird.

[Annemarie Conti]

Yeah, the bird looks out of your league.

[Liberty Mutual Advertiser]

Anyways, get a [e-mail] or with your local agent.

[Annemarie Conti]

Liberty. Liberty. Liberty. Liberty.