Investigation finds Amazon has been destroying thousands of unsold goods at its UK-based Dunfermline warehouse; source says 130K items are destroyed per week
Exclusive: Watch footage showing the ‘destruction zone’ in Amazon's Dunfermline warehouse where millions of unsold items are destroyed every year
ITVRichard Pallot
Context & Ripple Effects
ITV's Dunfermline footage put a number on what Amazon's UK fulfilment network does with unsold stock — a source pegging destruction at roughly 130,000 items per week in a single building. The exposé landed just weeks before Amazon announced two programs to cut waste, including reselling used items, a direct response to the report.
Destruction has since re-emerged as an Amazon pattern rather than a one-off: the company now runs Project PI, using computer vision to sort damaged from sellable stock at scale, while a later investigation into destroyed rare books showed scanned goods being discarded even when they carry collector value.
First-order effects
Amazon faces immediate reputational and regulatory exposure in the UK, where the 'destruction zone' footage makes its disposal volumes visible for the first time.
Brands and sellers whose unsold inventory flows through Dunfermline now face scrutiny over why their stock is being binned instead of discounted or returned.
Second-order effects
Rival fulfilment providers get a differentiation opening: transparent resale-and-donation handling of overstock becomes a selling point against Amazon's warehouses.
Amazon's own follow-on programs — used-goods resale and Project PI's damage detection — redirect inventory economics from disposal fees toward recovery value inside the same buildings.
Third-order effects
If the pattern holds, warehouse automation shifts from moving goods to triaging them — deciding sell, rescan, or destroy — making inventory's end-of-life a software decision rather than a logistics one.
Sustained investigative pressure points toward regulation of e-commerce destruction practices, forcing disclosure of disposal volumes across the sector.
The trend: E-commerce warehousing is being pushed by investigations and automation alike from silent disposal toward algorithmic triage, resale, and disclosure of what happens to unsold stock.
Exclusive: Amazon is destroying millions of items of unsold stock in one of its UK warehouses every year, an ITV News investigation has uncovered. Many of the products - including smart TVs and laptops - are often new and unused. https://www.itv.com/... #AmazonWaste https://twitt…
This is the dark side of capitalism that Amazon don't want you to see. The wealth of Amazon's founder and CEO Jeff Bezos increased by $70 billion last year, and Amazon don't pay their fair share of taxes here. Meanwhile, they throw away items that could be put to good use. https:…
Amazon UK is destroying millions of new, unused products every year, from laptops and TVs to face-masks and books. This is while 14+ million people in the UK are in poverty. This is what putting profit before people looks like. https://twitter.com/...
“In one week in April, a leaked document from inside the Dunfermline warehouse showed more than 124,000 items marked ‘destroy’.” A totally staggering story. Amazon sending vast amounts of often brand new products to landfill/waste https://www.itv.com/...
Why can't they give the unsold return stock to charities, churches providing goods to the community or homeless units? This is making me raging - #amazonwaste https://twitter.com/...
Former Amazon warehouse worker claims his centre was asked to find 130,000 items to “destroy” per week including the odd MacBook. ITV News says it tracked many of these items to a UK landfill site. Mad if true. Fwiw, Amazon says no items are sent to landfill in the UK https://twi…
A former Amazon employee secretly filmed the ‘destruction zone’ at the company's Dunfermline warehouse where unwanted goods are marked ‘destroy’. A leaked document showed more than 124,000 items marked as ‘destroy’ in just a week. Watch: https://www.itv.com/... #AmazonWaste
This is absolutely staggering and it reminds me of Burberry burning £28million of stock rather than discount anything - except the scale of this is so much worse. You could donate those masks, laptops or fans to hospitals, schools or families! https://twitter.com/...
Amazon's UK boss John Boumphrey told ITV News just six weeks ago - before he knew of our investigation - the amount of unwanted stock that was destroyed was “extremely small”. https://www.itv.com/... #AmazonWaste https://twitter.com/...
Amazon sets up a system where it charges sellers by the month to store stock in its warehouse, offers a service where it will destroy items that haven't sold, and then washes its hands of the fact that it disposes of more than 80,000 unsold goods a week https://www.itv.com/...
ITV News followed one of the lorries loaded with containers marked ‘electrical destroy’ from the Dunfermline warehouse to a waste recycling centre. We filmed the pallets piled with unwanted goods being unloaded at the site. #AmazonWaste