Undercover video from an employee
at an Amazon facility apparently in
Scotland shows that millions of
unsold products get destroyed,
including incredibly valuable
products as well.
Let's show you a little bit of this
video that one of the workers
gave to ITV in Britain.
>> Secret footage captured in
what's known as the distruction
zone, and that calls into question
the company's environmental and
ethical practices.
An ITV News investigation reveals
unsold laptops scanned not for
delivery, but instead marked,
destroy.
Boxes full of electrical items such
as drills, shavers, headphones,
even smart TVs, the list goes on.
Brand new books still in there
wrappers, or jewelry, or
steel cutlery, with that same
instruction, destroy.
>> And look, I think even if
that was just a little bit of that,
that would be pretty insane, but
apparently there's a weekly target
at that one facility of 130,000
items to destroy.
And apparently, so there's
different ways you can get rid of
these things, you can destroy it or
you can give it away.
I think many of you watched that
are probably thinking, wait can't
you just give that to people,
random people?
Or I don't know, maybe just
the employees who you're abusing?
Well they do
give away a little bit.
In comparison to the 124,000 items
marked destroy,
28,000 were marked donate.
So isn't that nice,
a tiny little percentage of it?
And it's some stuff,
it's cheap jewelry or whatever, but
it's MacBooks and its fans and
iPads and TVs and this whole thing
just seems insane, yes.
But I don't understand what system
could produce the need for
this much destruction and waste.
>> It's like the Ercot thing that
we were talking about earlier,
how I'm being expected to recycle
and conserve as much as possible.
But you have people like Amazon or
if not people, but you have
companies like Amazon, who are just
being so wasteful and there's their
seem no consequences of it.
And there's a reason why Jeff Bezos
is going to space and
there's a petition to leave
him there because he's doing so
much harm to this country.
So much harm that so
many people around the entire globe
are trying to combat, but how can
you possibly compete with it?
It's so wasteful.
Any kind of waste kind of hurts my
heart, I don't like it.
I don't know if that's because of
the way I was raised or
whatever the case is, but any kind
of waste is waste, it doesn't need
to happen and it's so pointless.
And I am curious as to what
determines whether something is
destroyed or donated.
What is the criteria there?
And why is one so
much more than the other, and
not the other way around?
>> Yeah, I don't know.
I am hoping that if enough people
talk about this story that maybe
they will shed a little bit of
light on that, preferably maybe
change the situation a little.
But it's pretty bad, 6 million
products at that facility.
Previous report in France found 3
million products being destroyed,
that's France and Scotland.
I will just assume that nothing
like this happens in
the United States, but if it does,
that could be really bad.
And so, look, this is just one of
a number of different issues
that thankfully employees at Amazon
have made people aware of.
This is a massive corporation.
There are some benefits to that,
but there are clearly a lot of
negatives both in terms of
the ethical implications of
wrecking TVs and
stuff rather than giving them away,
but also the environmental stuff.
6 million products for
one facility, that's a lot
of waste that's being produced.
Maybe there could be practices that
would make it not actually have to
happen at all.
But anyway, maybe at some point
we'll learn more.
Thank you to all the reporters that
are talking with employees and
getting us this information.
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