While we are not fans of spinners, two of our team at Forest Hill could not pass up this stand which they found at a dumpster. The stand is in excellent condition. It helps us resolve a Christmas space issue and provides welcome flexibility. The deep shelves allow us to efficiently display a range of items we want to promote away from our traditional gift display.
Dumpster diving can be rewarding – it’s certainly good for the environment.
Dumpster diving is an activity that opens our eyes to the decadence of developed society and, more importantly for this blog, the lack of ethics displayed by many Australian businesses.
I live near a large market that dumps their fresh produce on a regular basis. I do not shop from this market as they waste tremendous amounts of food before expiry.
This business could easily organise a charity to collect the produce. Instead, the business does what is easiest and cheapest and throws tonnes of fresh produce out every week.
All to put a few extra dollars in the owner’s pockets, which he/she most likely spends on more expensive meat or some other excess.
I take fruit & vegetables from their dumpster, not to save money, but to do what I can to put my conscience is at ease.
Luke, years ago I worked at a supermarket and they implement the idea of giving the dented cans etc to charities and even sending them to third world countries. It was stopped after management discovered staff were purposely damaging stock in order to give more to the needy.
I do agree though that something should be done to stop waste like that.
I’ve seen many stores not only dump fresh produce, but clothing items as well that could have been put to better use during the winter months.
Mark, ironically I found a stand just like this in my shopping centres dumpster, in just as good as new condition. Though not a newsagency, I now use the stand for software. I only had to dust it and its now a focus for low-cost software and games.. just amazing some of the treasures you can find. FYI These perfectly good stands tend to come from bookstores who receive vendor-supplied units that generally don’t cost them a cent.