50 Times People Couldn’t Believe Their Luck While Dumpster Diving

One of my old employers had an in business store for employees. They sold possible neccesities, gifts and food. At the end of each day the owners made the sales clerks throw out everything edible whether it was past the sell by date or not. Boxes and BOXES of prepacked sandwiches juice/milk bottles and fresh (completely unblemished) fruit just thrown out. We tried to lobby to get permission to take it to a homeless shelter. The answer was no because they didn't want to be liable. Didn't take us long to say f**k em and do it anyway. Got caught. Got fired. But for a few glorious weeks that homeless shelter was a fricken party at dinner time. 10/10 would do again.

Because capitalism is a greedy power-hungry jerk that doesn't care about humans

because if someone get sick because of the food they could get sued. so yeah it suck but nobody want to get sued because they do a good deed

Some companies even dump bleach over the discarded food to discourage dumpster diving and unhoused people.

My family only throws old rotted food away, or the scraps of food (Cherry pits, strawberry leaves, banana peels, etc)

The sad reality is that until government makes donating financially more rewarding than write-off as loss (= throw in trash to destroy) the companies never will stop doing this. They literally get tax reduction for the amount the thrown in trash goods are worth at their cost of production or purchase while donating isn’t tax deductible. For example when a factory produces more than planned for the day they literally throw the over-production in the trash and write it off as a loss and the tax reduction gets them the cost of production back. Make donating the extra the financially interesting choice and turn binning into a cost and it will augment the charitable stance of companies. My brother drove the dumpster truck for a while. They cannot save even 1 pack of discarded same day produced Kelloghs for example because the company must destroy the goods to receive the tax reduction. My brother quit his job as it’s heartbreaking knowing this compared to how many people in need there are…

The sad reality is that until government makes donating financially more rewarding than write-off as loss (= throw in trash to destroy) the companies never will stop doing this. They literally get tax reduction for the amount the thrown in trash goods are worth at their cost of production or purchase while donating isn’t tax deductible. For example when a factory produces more than planned for the day they literally throw the over-production in the trash and write it off as a loss and the tax reduction gets them the cost of production back. Make donating the extra the financially interesting choice and turn binning into a cost and it will augment the charitable stance of companies. My brother drove the dumpster truck for a while. They cannot save even 1 pack of discarded same day produced Kelloghs for example because the company must destroy the goods to receive the tax reduction. My brother quit his job as it’s heartbreaking knowing this compared to how many people in need there are…

I read 'saved from landfill', as in they stopped it from reaching landfill in the first place, not that it was 'rescued' from landfill.

Panera Bread does donate their unsold items to local food banks and homeless shelters

These are unusual finds. You'd have to go through a lot of trash over a long period to find anything remotely as good. I like to see the success stories too, but by the hour, the benefits are far less than the time and tuck factor.