The disposal of unsalable goods is not a scandal – it is day-to-day business
Greenpeace smuggled an employee into Amazon’s logistics center in Winsen an der Luhe and found out that the Group destroys new goods that have not been sold for a long time. According to reports, these were also goods from marketplace retailers, some of which had not left the warehouse, i.e. were still in their original packaging. But what seems like a big scoop to environmentalists is old hat for trade experts and a part of the business (of course not very pleasant, since it is unprofitable). No retailer likes to dispose of goods that he could still sell and turn into cash. But if the probability of being able to sell the product in the future tends towards zero and the storage costs exceed the residual value that can still be achieved, then there is really only one solution for every retailer.
The new law on waste prevention falls short
Here lies the first problem that politicians could have been aware of even then ( we already wrote it back then): The Recycling Management Act and the Waste Framework Directive provide that destruction is possible, for example, if the maintenance of goods is not economically reasonable. And that is – the Neckermann catalog sends its regards – the case more often than environmental activists can imagine. Incidentally, it occurs much more frequently in the area of low-cost fashion, for example. Companies such as H&M, Primark and Zara have practically made this problem their own in recent years with their micro-collections, some of which come and go on a monthly basis. But here, too, it is the customer who has a say: What there is no market for is simply not produced – at the latest the second or third time, not anymore.
After all, the Greenpeace research has also shown that the unsalable goods will more or less sorted by type before disposal. The fact that a handful of employees are permanently entrusted with this in a huge logistics center should not surprise anyone. Nevertheless, neither Greenpeace nor anyone else except the trader himself can judge how many goods this affects. And that’s where the legislature has to start, or in principle has already done it, even if the implementing ordinances for the law that was passed last spring are still missing.
The Documentation must be conclusive
It is important and correct to require dealers to document how many goods this applies to. It remains to be seen whether the figures then available are reliable and whether a large retail group will find a loophole to offset the exact percentages or even to dilute them through internationalization.
In any case, Amazon is talking about goods in the alcohol range in the current case, but does not become more specific. Competitor Otto had declared two years ago (in the context of the discussion about returns) that more than 97 percent will go straight to the retailer and that even only a small percentage of the remaining three percent will be disposed of.
You can blame Amazon for a lot, but certainly not for having inefficient warehousing. Incidentally, the goods from third-party suppliers are still their goods – that is to say: The alternative would be to send the products back to the dealer or manufacturer so that they can then be disposed of. One can rather discuss the possibility of writing off unsaleable goods. It would make sense to enable them to be passed on free of charge under the premise of full depreciation and to abolish the value added tax that was previously incurred on donations in kind. The giving away of goods, for example for a good cause, is still tied to strict rules that barely allow retailers, let alone make them attractive, to go this route. And all of this only makes sense if the retailer is released from product liability in this case.
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