Amazon destroys new laptops, smart TVs and drones

One of Amazon's warehouses. Nine football fields big. Amazon wastes goods out of space
Amazon Massively Destroys Goods. Not because they do not comply with legal standards, not because the expiration date has expired, but simply because they occupy too much space in the warehouses.

The fact that the lockdowns suddenly made everyone buy online and delivered their parcels to their home caused a shift in logistics to businesses. Instead of retailers rented warehouses for their own stocks, a large portion of the inventory came to wholesalers like Amazon. The pandemic has caused the need for storage space to increase enormously, logistics companies to look for expansion. A trend that existed since 2015, but now only accelerated. Online retailers increased their storage space from 7.2 million square feet in 2015 to 54 million in 2021.

That need for storage, combined with the cost of storing unsold products for months, also led to a waste of unsold products that are being destroyed. ITV says Amazon would destroy more than 100,000 unsold products per week.

Amazon destroys millions of new, unused products every year in its warehouse in Scotland alone. It's smart TVs, laptops, drones, hair drones, hair drones, jewellery, expensive headphones, hard drives, books and wrapped face masks. Undercover footage broadcast by ITV News. An anonymous ex-employee tells ITV that the company imposed a weekly target of destroying at least 130,000 products.

“I've been working in logistics for 30 years and I've never seen such a question,” says Robin Woodbridge. The company he works for, Prologis, owns and manages logistics warehouse parks in the UK. They're building as fast as they can, but it has been a struggle to keep up with the boom in online shopping in recent years. And the pandemic has only accelerated the trend, making warehousing hot property.