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Comment by purephase | Hacker News Reader

I've never understood why some of these corporations just trash so much of these materials that are just fine. Is it just that no one will buy them if they're re-packaged? I've seen a lot of re-packaged goods on shelves, it doesn't appear to be an issue for some retailers.

The idea of taking in returns from customers and just throwing the product out seems absolutely insane to me.

And the food waste is just depressing. When there's so many hungry people in the world. I understand that distribution is a concern here, but this has to be a workable problem somewhere in here to reduce this waste.

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Have you ever had to go through an estate sale or something? 80% of "value" is knowing who to sell something to.

It takes far more energy in most cases to sort through, assess items, locate buyers and transport items then you could ever hope they'd be worth.

You can be sure they do that if it's cost effective and doesn't dilute the brand. That's where a lot of dollar store inventory comes from; it just has to be in big enough volumes.

> And the food waste is just depressing. When there's so many hungry people in the world

You hit on it, yourself. It's not like food I don't throw away is going to feed a starving orphan in a developing country. Those orphans aren't starving because the world doesn't produce enough food.

You can get it from the corporations, they'll even pay you to take it away. They just don't want to be liable when somebody get sick or dies after they've gifted them some product that regulations rule has to be disposed of. If you're willing to take that risk and you can convince the government to license you, you can feed a lot of people.

I've also seen a rise in services that sell end-of-day-but-still-good leftovers from restaurants and cafes (bagels, taco meat, rice balls, etc) as cheap 'mystery bag' bundles direct to consumer.

I was once in Dunkin Donuts quite late (10 pm, I think). They gave any perishable food item left, for free. I got some doughnuts. I guess they could just give away the leftover food at the end of the day. Though the logistics of it wouldn’t be easy

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