Although the holiday season may be over, many people take advantage of the sales that often take place afterwards to get decorations at a lower price.
A TikToker known for highlighting usable items that stores put in the trash, took to the streets on the day after Christmas to find, outside of a CVS in New York City, a trash bag filled with blankets, socks, and other various objects marketed as Christmas merchandise.
“Like clockwork. Wondering when - if ever - corporations like CVS and Hallmark will change. What will it take to stop this endless cycle of overproduction?” Anna Sacks captioned her video.
Although Sacks has looked through the drugstore’s trash before, her video features her saying that “this is a big pile for CVS”.
In the video, she is with a friend of hers going through the bag, in which she discovered many Christmas-themed items like gift wraps, gift bags, Santa hats, and bows. Her anger centred around hundreds of other brand-new Christmas-themed blankets and fuzzy socks. The pair also found several dog beds in the trash bag with the tags still on them.
“They could be in a shelter,” Sacks’ friend could be heard saying in her TikTok. “I know this is crazy,” she responded.
The two of them ended up nicely setting out all the items they found in good, or even new, condition, with many people lining up to claim them. A few others helped the girls out by continuing to look through the trash bags to make sure they weren’t missing anything.
After posting, the video went on to receive almost 400,000 views, with many people taking to the comments section to question why CVS was throwing items away instead of either discounting them or donating some of the blankets, socks, and dog beds to a homeless shelter or animal shelter.
“Do companies not understand that if they donated instead of throwing it away, it’s a tax write off and they get money?” one commenter wrote.
“The blankets and socks are killing me!!” another commenter wrote, agreeing with Sacks’ point. “So many shelters can use!!”
“Why on earth can’t they donate the pet stuff to an animal shelter?!” a third commenter asked.
In an interview with Today, the TikToker explained that she posts videos of her digging through trash to make a point that retailers should “donate, not dump”.
“Instead of destroying or discarding these useful items, set it aside for them to be donated,” she told the outlet. “This is not the first instance of going through CVS’ trash and finding a lot of things.”
Carissa Falzarano, a spokesperson for CVS, said the company is “unable to verify the veracity of the video” in a statement to The Independent.
“Our product disposal guidelines and procedures comply with applicable state and federal regulations, and they are consistent with that of the retail industry,” Falzarano said.
“We also have initiatives in place to reduce the amount of waste generated at our retail stores and other facilities,” the statement continued. “Our approach optimises the liquidation, donation and recycling of unsalable products and works to reduce the number of these products that come into our stores.”
