Today, we’re diving deep on dumpster diving — and learning a bit about retail waste in the process. Plus:
There’s a lot of waste out there. Tons of perfectly good stuff from retailers — clothes, toys, home decor, makeup, and more — gets thrown away with little hesitation. My colleague deputy editor Annemarie Conte wanted to understand why this happens. So she dove into a bunch of dumpsters. I caught up with her recently to hear what it was like spending the last several months digging through trash around Dallas and New York City — and what she learned in the process. — Erin Neil Read Annemarie’s investigation→ Did you find any surprising treasures while you were diving? I don’t think I realized how much of it is just tchotchkes. But the thing that really shocked me about this story is that it doesn’t matter how small something is for it to still have such a large environmental impact. We estimated the carbon footprint of manufacturing a necklace — one of the lightest items we had — and it was significant. Producing it involved metal mining and air freight. It was a perfectly good necklace that can be used and worn and loved by somebody for a very long time. It’s surprising to me that some of these items don’t get donated first. How much of the stuff that is made ends up in trash? The bottom line is that we don’t know because it is such a decentralized system. One of my sources called it the wild west. He estimates that it is billions of pounds of products — just from the US — that end up in the landfill. I guess that begs the question: Why do companies make so much stuff? A lot of times, it’s optics. They don’t want to leave money on the table, and it is often cheaper to throw something out than to lose the opportunity cost of never having made it at all. I don’t want to go dumpster diving. (Sorry.) What else can I do about all this waste? I don’t want to lay this all on the feet of individual consumers. Sure, there’s a little bit of consumerist culture at play, but the average person is not the problem. However, I think the best thing we can do is push more toward repairing, reusing, or donating products that you may not love anymore — and not purchasing things that you’re not going to keep for a long time. It’s the checkout gauntlet and the impulse purchases that we should really try to avoid. I think that Wirecutter’s ethos aligns very much with the idea that we really want people to buy the right stuff for them and nothing else. If a sad duck lamp brings you joy, we’re not going to stop you from buying a sad duck lamp. We independently review everything we recommend. When you buy through our links, we may earn a commission. Learn more ›
In 2021, influencer Tiffany Roach found more than a dozen Coach bags in a dumpster behind a mall. When videos of her haul spread across social media, the reaction was shock and disgust. Annemarie reports on what happened next. What it reveals about how retailers deal with excess products→
Investing in durable, repairable products is a great way to keep things out of the trash. And with proper use and care, many Wirecutter picks can last for decades — and even a lifetime. Including heirloom-worthy cookware and clothes→
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