Food wastage by Walmart goes public

Daniel Schoeler a former employee at Walmart store in Vancouver spoke up about the wasteful process in which the company discards food items.

According to Schoeler, Walmart disposes what seems to be like perfectly good food into trash compactors on a daily basis, although the company claims that they only discard inedible food items.
Schoeler stated that it’s such a disturbing sight to see large quantities of food items thrown away.” They just toss it freely.”
Schoeler who left Walmart last spring stated that he had been working for the company for six years.

He also noted the items that were frequently being disposed of by the company included, tubs of margarine, yogurt and sour cream, bags of apples and potatoes, watermelons, cottage cheese, cans of food with expiry dates that hadn’t passed, cheese, butter and baked goods.

Reports also showed that Jenny Rustemeyer and Grant Baldwin accumulated $20,000 worth of dumpster food in six months and claim that it was just picked up from the dumpster.

After hearing such reports, CBC Marketplace initiated an investigation to see if the claims were true. They were able to find that there were huge amounts of waste found in other Walmart stores all over the country.
In Toronto to be precise, garbage bins were found almost on a daily basis, filled with food items.

A full coverage of the investigation will be released on Friday October 28.
According to Schoeler, majority of shoppers at Walmart stores are low income earners and are trying very hard to buy food stuffs and the company is simply just throwing away the items away.

A spokesperson for Walmart Alex Robertson, explained that the company is making all efforts to cut down on food wastage.

There is a perception that the company does not care but they actually really care he said.

It is very expensive to handle waste so it is not in the best interest of the company to be discarding food items carelessly.

Roberton also highlighted that Walmart has joined hands with various organizations to donate unsold food and that they only dispose food that are not fit for human consumption.

In his perspective, a professor from the University of British Columbia stated that “it’s less expensive to throw away items, than pay workers to separate edible and inedible food items.’