Man Claims That Walmart Throwing Away $200K Worth Of Food In Video Is Actually A Normal Night
People are wondering why they don't just donate the food instead of letting it go to waste.
@impicklerick408 / TikTok A Walmart employee posted a “behind the scenes” clip from their time working at the retail superstore.
During one shift, the man who recorded the clip under the TikTok account “@impicklerick408,” showed hundreds of thousands of people the back room you’d likely find behind the “employees only” sign. In the back of the store, there were dozens of shopping carts filled with food — produce you’d normally find inside the freezer section — and he explained what was going on with the food.
The worker claimed Walmart was throwing away $200K worth of food in one night.
“Crazy Walmart throwing away over 200k worth of food in 1 night,” the employee captioned the video, alongside the hashtags “#walmart #crazy #food #waste #foodpoisoning.”
He’s standing in the back room with another fellow employee, both of which never make an appearance on the camera, as they talk about the food in the shopping carts. “Feel like there’s already starting to be a slight smell,” the other employee says next to the guy recording.
“Yeah there’s a heavy smell,” the employee holding the camera says before “boop-ing” a slab of porterhouse steak seven times.
Viewers were shocked by the amount of food being wasted.
Hundreds of comments poured in as viewers of the 8-second clip, posted on June 13, 2023, were appalled by the food waste.
“Why??” One person asked, “Wow!” another person remarked. A third person said, “they threw away so much stuff. it was sad,” as many, many others chimed in to say that when they worked at places such as this, they saw a lot of the same things.
Corporate food waste accounts for the majority of food waste in America.
According to Feeding America, an organization aiming to provide “equitable access to nutritious food for all,” corporate food waste accounts for 61% of all food waste in the United States. They claim that “commercial food waste makes up about 61% of all food waste or 66 billion pounds of food waste.” In total, 119 billion pounds of food is wasted in the United States each year.
In 2016, Canada news network CBC reported on how much food waste Walmart contributed over the course of more than 12 visits. They claimed that, during one visit, they found 12 waist-high trash bins filled with food like “produce, baked goods, frozen foods, meat and dairy products.”
Walmart claims that the reason for the food waste is that it’s no longer safe for consumption.
Although representatives from Walmart declined the CBC’s request for an on-camera interview, they did provide a statement that they hoped would explain the food waste they contribute and their initiatives to prevent those numbers from increasing.
“On some occasions, food which has not passed its best-before date is deemed unsafe for consumption,” Walmart said in its statement. “As a rule, we don't place fresh food items on display for sale if the quality is not acceptable.”
According to some of the people in the comments of @impicklerick408’s video, this is pretty much exactly what happens. The freezers/fridges in the store are powered by electricity, and when that electricity goes out, the temperatures start dropping. If the temps drop too low, they have to throw everything in the fridge away, no matter how good the food might still be.
In 2017, Walmart addressed food waste on their Facebook page after a similar video showed piles of food sitting outside of an Ohio Walmart dumpster. "Unfortunately, due to a tornado that affected our store in Celina, Ohio on November 5, the food being disposed of was unsafe for consumption after the store lost power for 14 hours," the company wrote. "Per internal and health department policies, we followed proper procedures by disposing of the food."
When these things happen, they claimed that they try to donate their food to food banks, but Ali-Zain Mevawala claims that he was given a different reason during his employment at an Edmonton, Canada, store.
“Once I asked my manager, ‘Why do we have to just throw it away? Why can't we just, you know, give it away to some people that really need it?’” he says. “And the manager [said], ‘If you just give it away to people, then why are they going to buy it from us?’”
To these corporations, profit margins are all that matters, so why would they give away free food when they could sell it? The loss from throwing the food out is less than they think it would be if they were to give it away, and the liability of selling food that might make someone sick is also not worth it. As a result, we get billions of pounds of food wasted every year.
Isaac Serna-Diez is an Assistant Editor for YourTango who focuses on entertainment and news, social justice, and politics.