Amazon destroying millions of items of unsold stock every year

ID 77563209 © Jonathan Weiss | Dreamstime.com

This is what irony is (do you hear us, Alanis Morissette?) – as increasing shortages of almost every category of goods are being reported across the UK, e-commerce behemoth Amazon is reportedly sending huge amounts of unsold stock – one employee put it at 130,000 items per week in just one of Amazon’s 24 UK distribution centres – to be destroyed, according to this in-depth investigation by ITV News. “Why are hundreds of thousands of products being destroyed in this way? The answer is Amazon’s hugely successful business model. Many vendors choose to house their products in Amazon’s vast warehouses. But the longer the goods remain unsold, the more a company is charged to store them. It is eventually cheaper to dispose of the goods, especially stock from overseas, than to continue storing the stock.”