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Seven Days at the Bin Store

defector.com

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Re: Seven Days at the Bin Store

#11

Post by tantalor »

> products that never made it to a consumer because the season ended, or a box was a little dented, or the purchaser never picked up their order, or a retailer was just running out of room in their warehouse

I wonder how tariffs will impact this. I imagine a lot of importers will balk at the sudden fee, and decline to pick up their stuff at the port.

Article mentions this much further down:

> But economic shocks are good for the secondhand economy. Roberson thinks tariffs could, eventually, lead to another bin-store bump.

Re: Seven Days at the Bin Store

#12

Post by pavel_lishin »

Freak_NL wrote: post #3

> “The goal for all the reverse logistics stuff,” says Roberson, “is to keep things out of the landfill.” Or rather, to make sure these things are bought and thrown out by consumers instead. Getting rid of unused products costs money unless you have a loophole that allows offloading it onto some poorer country (cf. Atacama desert clothing dump).

Well, ideally bought - and used for awhile - before being thrown directly into the garbage.

Almost everything we buy is going to end up in the trash, sooner or later.

Re: Seven Days at the Bin Store

#13

Post by dylan604 »

nancyminusone wrote: post #5

>I don’t want it, but what am I supposed to do? It will end up in the garbage one way or another. I stuff it in my bag. This seems to be the common thread here - judging by the pictures, the stuff in these bins seems to be 95% junk. It's trash brand new in the package. Hard to believe anyone would pay any amount for it. Almost seems like you're losing money by not dumping it directly into the ocean. Apparently, I'm w…

If you don't want it, don't buy it. The problem is that things are too cheap, so people don't hesitate to ask themselves if they really want it. It's just too cheap to not try it. It's also one of those things where the picture doesn't match the actual item similar to fast food advertising. If the shopper was looking at the item in person, most things would not be purchased.

Dumping it directly in the ocean is just skipping a few steps as much of it does end up there. It would be better to just dump it into a landfill instead of the ocean though

Re: Seven Days at the Bin Store

#14

Post by alistairSH »

tra3 wrote: post #10

Am I the only one that feels uncomfortable returning stuff? Took me years to get to get over, and yet I'd still prefer to forego buying something rather than returning it..

Nope, I hate returning things.

But, brick & mortar stores rarely have clothes that fit me* AND I somehow end up between sizes, so I tend to order two of everything (in S and M, or whatever) and return the one that fits worst.

From an environmental standpoint, I have no idea if this is better or worse than having fully-stocked brick & mortar shops. But, fact is, those don't exist any more, so this is what I do.

* At 5'7", I'm slightly on the short side for an American male, and at 150lbs, I'm smaller build than most as well. IME, clothes are either cut for skinny teenagers or for dads with 38" waists. And I'm neither, leaving to try on and return many items.

Edit - since maketheman's post got killed... I've yet to find a clothing brand that lists thigh or arm diameter, which tend to be the problem. The "slim-fit" stuff you mention usually fits my waist or torso, but will not go over my bicep or quad. And the normal cut from the same brand fits like a trash bag. I'm fine getting tailored clothes for suits and suchlike, but I'm talking about jeans and casual shirts here. Anyway, it's a totally first-world problem to have, I can deal with it.

Re: Seven Days at the Bin Store

#15

Post by alistairSH »

citizenpaul wrote: post #6
nancyminusone wrote: post #5

>I don’t want it, but what am I supposed to do? It will end up in the garbage one way or another. I stuff it in my bag. This seems to be the common thread here - judging by the pictures, the stuff in these bins seems to be 95% junk. It's trash brand new in the package. Hard to believe anyone would pay any amount for it. Almost seems like you're losing money by not dumping it directly into the ocean. Apparently, I'm w…

>Apparently, I'm wrong enough that there's hundreds of these stores in business. The stuff in the bins is from amazon returns. Its not a business of its own supply choices. The people that run the stores go to amazon pallet auctions where they buy the stuff unseen and hope to turn a profit on the arbitrage of what they pay vs the worth of the pallet.

What's really amazing is that enough people buy absolute crap from Amazon, then return it, that this business model exists at all. It's downright dystopian.

Re: Seven Days at the Bin Store

#16

Post by Theodores »

Empty gifts of capitalism!

This store is my idea of hell.

I am in the process of tidying up my dad's estate, and, despite the mountains of stuff he bought, there is not one single thing that I want for myself. I am done with stuff, particularly if it has bits missing!

I am sure that, if I went to any hoarders home, it would be exactly the same. There would not be a single item that I would want to walk away with.

Younger me might have thought this store to be great, but I am done.

It requires a special mindset to want stuff, to trade stuff on eBay, to collect stuff and to see it as valuable. Stuff is at the low end of what interests me, life is about people and ideas, not stuff.

You also have to believe in money if you are into stuff. But my status has nothing to do with money or how much stuff I have. I wish I could flip the switch and make it so that I wanted to hoard money and own stuff. But, once you have gone outside your basic needs, stuff starts to own you, rather than you owning stuff.

The thing is that, with the mountains of stuff that I have had to dispose of, all of it required real humans to put in the effort to design products, get them made, get them packaged and to get them sold. They did it with pride, yet, here I am, detesting the stuff.

The tech products that were hot five years ago but useless today are what amaze me the most. Take your humble TV. I can remember a time before flat screens, then there was the time when you had dead pixels. Right now I have a huge TV to dispose of. To all intents and purposes, it is perfect. Twenty five years ago, it would have been beyond anyone's dreams, jaws would have dropped. Yet now it is worth $150, if I could find a buyer.

Hence, max respect to those such as the owner of the Bin Store that can face up to the 'empty gifts of capitalism' and make a business of making sense of the stuff that mere mortals like me want to run away from.

Re: Seven Days at the Bin Store

#17

Post by jabroni_salad »

citizenpaul wrote: post #4
louwrentius wrote: post #2

These Bin Stores show to me that the pricing of products doesn't really reflect their true cost to the environment, society and the world at large. Our resources are finite and we tend to be so incredibly callous about this, I feel completely disconnected from it. Most of these products should not exist in the first place. The article also seem to imply that many of these Bin stores are also precarious businesses tha…

>(HN) is probably the worst place to voice this out loud Yeah. I got some hate on HN for saying some store that basically sold what I call "store to landfill" junk was. Well exactly that and it probably is not worth being upset that it was going out of business. As you said it was all about the HN feelings while ignoring the massive wasteful reality for a brief spike of endorphin. 10 Chinese children lived lives of a…

A 30 second gag is a nearly still a useful outcome, even if it's stupid. Ever since I read this article I have been using 'garfield telephone' as the bottom of the scale: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-47732553

I have been to the bin store and I want to appreciate them as basically being the retail equivalent of a catalytic converter, but the phrase 'garfield telephone' just bounces around in my head the whole time I'm there.

Re: Seven Days at the Bin Store

#19

Post by mrweasel »

citizenpaul wrote: post #6
nancyminusone wrote: post #5

>I don’t want it, but what am I supposed to do? It will end up in the garbage one way or another. I stuff it in my bag. This seems to be the common thread here - judging by the pictures, the stuff in these bins seems to be 95% junk. It's trash brand new in the package. Hard to believe anyone would pay any amount for it. Almost seems like you're losing money by not dumping it directly into the ocean. Apparently, I'm w…

>Apparently, I'm wrong enough that there's hundreds of these stores in business. The stuff in the bins is from amazon returns. Its not a business of its own supply choices. The people that run the stores go to amazon pallet auctions where they buy the stuff unseen and hope to turn a profit on the arbitrage of what they pay vs the worth of the pallet.

It's still mostly junk. The issue is do you really want to spend time returning a $5 junk purchase? For most people the answer is no. This is just the stuff that was returned or didn't sell, imagine how much of the stuff is thrown away by the buyers.

Some things are just made to cheaply, to hit a price point people will pay. When people then buy the item and realise that it's garbage, it gets tossed. Just maybe you can't make a good air-fryer for $50, but people will see it and think "For $50 I can give it a go". They then conclude that it's rubbish and take it to the junk yard.

No, most of this stuff should never have been made in the first place. We need to stop making products that has to hit a price point, regardless of quality. We need to stop making one-time-use novelty items.

Then you have the secondary effect: Some clever business people sees this trend and starts ordering junk in bulk on Wish, AliExpress or Temu, dumps it in big boxes with a few good items (maybe) and starts their own "fake" Bin Store.

Re: Seven Days at the Bin Store

#20

Post by jccalhoun »

There was one of these in my town. I went two different times and There were tons of cheap clothes (mostly women and children sizes), replacement parts for random appliances, as seen on tv crap. It is no wonder it went out of business: They get so much crap that no one wants that they can't even sell it for a dollar so they have to figure out what to do with it.
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