Dick’s Sporting Goods faces backlash after image surfaces of store’s dumpster: ‘How do we make it illegal?’

A Reddit user has shared a photo of an apparent corporate policy that is infuriating viewers.

In a recent post on the r/DumpsterDiving subreddit, a user shared a photo of dozens of broken golf clubs they allegedly found in a dumpster outside a Dick’s Sporting Goods store.

“I will never give this company a penny in my life,” the user wrote in their caption. “Opened it up and 100ish new golf clubs they destroyed. Could have given them to a charity, the boys and girls club, anything but no, broken.”

The user also explained in a follow-up comment that they saved many of the handles and bottoms of the clubs to put them to good use instead of letting them waste away in a landfill. They also said that another dumpster diver took a significant portion of the club pieces, too.

Dumpster divers and other thrifters often document the outlandish wastefulness of big-name retailers, sometimes finding hundreds of dollars’ worth of goods in the trash outside of major stores. According to the New York Times, large fashion companies frequently destroy overstocked items — sometimes by slashing or burning excess goods — to cheaply dispose of it.

“The simplest and most expediate way for a retailer to dispose of something, typically of low value, is to mark it out of its stock and dump it,” Mark Cohen, the director of retail studies at Columbia Business School, told the Times. “As egregious as it is to see seemingly perfect product put into a landfill, it’s the shortest and least expensive path.”

Users shared their frustration with such corporate waste in the comment section.

“How do we MAKE CHANGE?? How do we make it illegal to destroy goods??? We need to do something,” one user wrote.

“Lots of sh***y corporate stores do this. The evils of capitalism,” another user said.

“WTF…. Isn’t that metal recyclable?!” a third user commented.

Join our free newsletter for easy tips to save more, waste less, and help yourself while helping the planet.