It's no surprise retailers go through some shady practices when disposing of their unsold perishable merchandise. But one video being shared on TikTok is showing the true extent of this wastefulness, as well as the culpability of one major retailer.
The video, which was shared by Holly (@thedefiantgoddess), shows a dumpster full of frozen food boxes behind her local Target. The video is captioned, "Shame on you @Target. "
"Like, I understand if your freezers have gone out, but d***, this is all in packages. You could donate this," she explains.
What makes it worse is that the woman found the dumpster on Christmas Day, when people are supposed to be enjoying food and festivities with loved ones.
"This food could have been donated to an old folks home, a shelter … anything," she comments.
@thedefiantgoddess Shame on you @target #foodwaste #peoplestarving #waste #dobetter ♬ original sound - Holly🌺🦬
Food waste is a pertinent issue in America — and it's causing major environmental damage. Not only is the food itself being wasted, which takes tons of resources to grow, harvest, package, and sell, producing planet-warming air pollution along the way, but also the tons of plastic and cardboard packaging that go in the dumpster with it adds to the piles of unnecessary waste.
In the United States, 30-40% of all food is wasted at some step in the food supply chain; 31% of the loss occurs at the retail and consumer levels, such as the instance shown in the TikTok video. When food is placed in landfills, it releases planet-warming methane gas into the atmosphere.
Many retailers are incentivized via tax writeoffs to donate food to nonprofit organizations like shelters and food banks, but there is a lack of infrastructure to get it from the retailer to the distribution center safely without compromising its safety.
Some food recovery programs can aid in getting the food from point A to point B, but for many retailers, it's just easier to dump the food into the dumpster like the one shown in the video.
Folks in the comment section were enraged by the amount of food in the dumpster.
"@target you got some explaining to do!?!" one user wrote.
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