LONDON – An investigation at a warehouse in Scotland revealed that thousands of unsold items were being destroyed by Amazon. Now British lawmakers are demanding a meeting with the company’s country manager.
Footage from the undercover investigation by ITV News showed headphones, jewelry, televisions, and other high-value products being placed into boxes labeled “destroy” at a warehouse in the Scottish town of Dunfermline. Huge trucks then came and carried the stock to landfill sites and recycling centers.
Amazon operates 175 centers worldwide, taking up more than 150 million square feet of space.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.
According to ITV, John Boumphrey, Amazon’s country manager for the United Kingdom, said the number of items being destroyed by the company was “extremely small.”
Another unidentified whistleblower who was previously employed by Amazon in Hertfordshire, England, said that “lots of things from brand-new iPhones to PlayStations” were destroyed, along with books that had never been read.
Lawmaker Siobhain McDonagh expressed her shock that the company had destroyed items that could have benefited many children across the country—especially during the coronavirus pandemic. Many families struggled to educate their children from home during the outbreak, often with limited digital equipment.
Many Britons demanded to know why items in good condition were being thrown away when vulnerable people or charities could have used the goods.
Accusations of Amazon’s destruction of products are not new.
In 2019, the French newspaper Le Monde reported that Amazon destroyed an estimated 3.2 million unsold products in 2018. “Amazon, seller of mass destruction,” read the headline at the time.
The content as it appears here has been adapted from the original article: “Footage of Amazon destroying thousands of unsold items in Britain prompts calls for official investigation,” June 23, 2021. © The Washington Post. For the full, original version, view the Reading task in the advanced version of this lesson.