Shopper sparks outrage with image of Home Depot’s ‘revolting’ and wasteful practices: ‘It disgusts me to no end’

A post by a Redditor in the r/Anticonsumption subreddit, which has the motto, “Consumerism Kills,” earned almost 1,000 upvotes and left plant lovers livid.

The outrage comes from what appears to be hundreds of perfectly good and seemingly very alive plants headed for the dumpster at a Home Depot.

In the post, the Redditor shares a photo of multiple carts full of plants stacked on top of each other under the caption, “Daily Waste at Home Depot.”

Under the photo, the user said, “The plants are thrown in the dumpster – possibly made into fertilizer (huge waste of shipping fuel, time and labor). Then all the plastic pots are tossed with the rest of the garbage (could easily be re-used).”

They then explained that this happens several times a week, and this is just one store, hitting the point home by saying, “Multiply that by 2000 stores.” They further point out that Home Depot isn’t the only company throwing away massive amounts of product.

This amount of waste is upsetting on multiple levels. One is that if these plants were discounted due to defects rather than thrown out, that would likely keep them in the dirt and out of landfills.

This brings on the next upsetting issue. The plants are in plastic containers, meaning they will unnecessarily contribute to the nearly 40 million tons of plastic thrown away in the U.S. every year, only about 5% of which gets recycled.

Plastic and plants aside, trash is a major contributor to the pollution blanket overheating the planet, and the U.S. produces over 12% of the planet’s trash, despite only making up 4% of its population, according to EnvironmentAmerica.

All this considered, commenters on the post had a lot to say.

“Don’t even get me started,” said one. “I worked the garden center at fleet farm and the amount of plants we just threw away was unreal. it disgusts me to no end.”

“What they do with the plastic is only my guess, but the most likely answer is: landfill,” offered another.

One commenter went a step further with some advice: “I heavily encourage anyone reading this to seed your own plants. The waste from the plant industry is revolting.”

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