Once the merchandise is rolled out, it is never goes through the line again. Whatever doesn't sell gets destroyed either through recycling or tossed into a landfill. Every 12 minutes, a new line of six blue carts gets rolled out. This goes on from store opening to closing 9am to 5pm Monday through Saturday. Look at the amount of clothes and products on each cart, and imagine the volume of perfectly usable condition donated consumer products passing through each day on their way to the dump!
Employees clear away a line of blue bins at a time, and roll out a fresh set. Before the bins are out, prospectors stake their territory where they hope the best loot will be placed. The shoppers are instructed to wait behind the yellow line. Once you are in position, you are not allowed to move from your spot or touch the goods until all the bins are in place and the employees announce "Shop!"
Some negotiations happen among the seasoned looters before the seizing starts. One man wanted a bag across the way and asked the lady facing him if he can have it. It's nothing valuable; perhaps it is a personal indulgence. 'Sure', she says. Later the lady asked the man for something she had her eye on. But save for these occasional collaborations, the experience was highly aggressive and competitive!
As soon as the command to "Shop!" is given, people lunge to grab anything that looked like it could sell well. Purses are especially popular. Almost everyone there is trying to resell the goods they salvaged to someone else who could make their investment worthwhile. The store charges by weight, so a purse doesn't weigh much and figures that it can be resold for a good profit. Children's toys in good condition are also sought after. Toy guns and vehicles are highly prized. The waiting time gives people ample preparation, and it's common for a person to snatch several items at once.
If it doesn't sell, what good is it to me?
People used laundry baskets and plastic bins at the assembly line to transport their investments back to their shopping carts. Few people cared to check the size of the stuff they seized. It didn't matter if it didn't fit them or anyone they knew, somebody would come along with the right fit. The occasional ones who shopped for themselves had little in their carts.
Shoes in pristine condition were grabbed, but many excellent pairs were ignored. Clothing bins were also usually attacked with less enthusiasm than the other merchandise. It was just hard to sift through the mounds of indistinguishable fabrics.
Nobody weighed down their cart with kitchen table products. A cart loaded with pristine condition plates, ceramics, tableware were sent through to the dump because their value by weight was not profitable. What a shame. Nobody bought CDs or other digital media either. Probably no profit can be made, plus there wasn't much of it.
Crossing the border operation
A Goodwill worker told me Mexicans come up every week and sell it across the border. That was basically their job. Everyone was grabbing and being aggressive and favoring certain profitable goods the same as they were. The Mexicans captured my attention because they had the largest group present, and because their efforts were organized and collaborative.
Later I chatted with one of them in the parking lot as they loaded their caravan. $5,000 could be made in three days at flea markets, the Mexican told me. I asked him how much he spent, he thought about it and said five hundred. He was from El Paso, TX. They drove 12 hrs up to Colorado. Five vans. The van was filled from floor to ceiling. A huge black storage bag on top was filled too. A team of at least eight people made the trip.
The Mexicans formed a solid line around an entire bin. No outside shopper has any chance to swoop in before their boys dart their arms and snatch out an armful of toys and children's goods. Some of the Mexicans wear gloves. After I moved some of the products, my palms started itching and I can see why if you were to do this from 9 to 5 - and those boys were, you would want to cover up. Also, broken glass and sharp plastics scattered about the bottoms of the bins where frantic looters tossed their unwanted debris.
The Mexican boys seemed to have more trouble with treasure hunting in the clothing. I doubt they thought anything of value could be found, and were more on the look out for a miraculous purse or toy that got mixed in with the clothes, than to actually buy clothes. They seemed to delve into it more on principle than on avarice. Some of the re-sell ladies picked various pieces out of the piles as they vultured about though. Perhaps the job was divided to the Mexican ladies to figure out the clothes, which required less immediate grabbing and was not as high priority.
Disillusionment
It's good I suppose, that these Craigslist and Flea Market and Cross the Border sellers come and take this potential landfill garbage away and help get it into the hands of someone who can use it. But the broken dishes, and haphazardly strewn books, thoughtlessly ripped and torn lampshades and posters left in these resellers' wake leaves no doubt about the nature of their intentions. It's not in the spirit of re-using and reducing waste that motivates them. All the goods that can't turn profit get ignored without guilt. And one can hardly blame them, seeing their massive caravan hauling away the donation center's own product that could not generate profit. Who would they go to, if their product could not sell?
I never knew the ultimate fate of my donated goods, but I always had an innocent view that my good condition clothes, books, and household items would find good use in the hands of somebody, somewhere in the world. If nobody would buy it, nevertheless I had faith that it would be given away for free in good will (as I had) to someone in need.
And those clothing vouchers to get free clothes from second hand stores, I thought were a nice charitable act. But after seeing the volume of discarded unprofitables, I wager that the stuff that I had spent hard earned money to obtain, that served me well and I hoped would do the same for someone without - all it meant to the company was the couple of dollars that anyone might spend to buy it, and nothing at all if nobody could make money off it. It was not an actual thing, that had utility and a purpose. It was a cheap lottery ticket that one tosses onto the street if it does not scratch favorably.
Consumer society
The employee said that without an Outlet store, no area Goodwill can get rid of its product through the retail sales and has an issue with disposing old product. He said when they started the Outlet store, the waste in donated goods that couldn't be sold and had to be thrown out was something over 50%. That number is staggering. Now I see how Goodwill stores can have half off discounts every day for various color stickered merchandise. It's all going to the dump, at a transportation cost anyways if they can't sell. Giving away clothes costs the company nothing at all, except that then no one would spend money to buy anything. Couldn't they just set aside a Free Bin in each store for some of the junk that they plan to throw out?
Now due to the Outlet store, their waste is down to around 18%. If waste is at 10%, he said that is considered zero waste. How that makes any sense is totally misleading, but I get it. There is always waste in any retail business, that margin of waste is tolerable, and any organization wants to make their numbers sound good.
This experience was a first-hand evidence to me about how much America is a consumer society that buys an inordinate amount of material goods that they don't need. It's manufactured much more than there is a need for, its primary purpose is to take back the money lent to the working class by corporation owners, it's disposable, and it's more like an abstract representation of value the way currency is than something of inherent worth.
The sad irony of wealth inequality. So many people have nothing, yet so many goods are wasted. We'd rather pay $1 to throw it away than $2 to redistribute it. Thanks capitalism.
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