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But if ordering on Amazon, as a paying customer, I would at least want to know up front if I'm buying something that came out of the trash, and make my own decision on if I wanted to buy it or not.

I agree, but let me play Devil's advocate a moment.

I went to a gin distillery on vacation a couple months ago. It was well known, well respected, sold internationally, etc. I'm not really into gin, but I thought what they gave us tasted pretty great. It was well packaged, their physical location was in a nice spot and had a well decorated, cool little area where they went over the history, their employees all seemed well educated and happy to be there, etc.

When we got to look at the distillation process, we went into a very small, narrow looking hallway with all the equipment and got to see the gin coming out into a big, pretty unceremonious looking plastic bucket.

Their distillation equipment was expensive, everything was very clean, and it seemed like this was just their process. I didn't really see anything wrong with it.

But, if at the point of sale, someone had a picture of the gin going into that plastic bucket and let everyone know that this was a part of their process, I think fewer people would buy it. And for no good reason. The gin was great, everything was clean, and I'm sure cleaning and maintaining that setup would be easier to deal with than some sort of automatic bottling machinery.

Although most people think knowing where a product came from is good information (and it is if you have a good understanding of the context/what to compare it to), people have a tendency to be irrationally averted by things that don't really have any bearing on the product. I'd argue a product being "new" vs "warehoused" vs "trashed" is one of them. If the product is in the same shape, it shouldn't really matter if it was on the front and center shelf, in the back of a warehouse, or in a dumpster. It's the same product. Emphasizing where it comes from can cause people to irrationally avoid it and have it go to waste when it's perfectly fine.

Great points. Related note: studies show (citation needed, sorry), people consistently perceive wine as better-tasting if they believe it's more expensive.

Wasn't there also a study that showed people perceived wine to taste better when it was poured by an Italian waiter compared to an Asian waiter?

I tried tasting really old, really expensive wine a little while ago. I can't say I find it very different from new and cheap wine (certainly not better-tasting)...

Many years ago I had a 1997 Lafite, which was an excellent year from an excellent vintner, one of the premier grand crus. It wasn't quite as trendy yet and I paid about $500 for the bottle at a restaurant. I reckon it tasted better than a $30 bottle, but certainly not >15 times better.

On the other hand, the Château d'Yquem sauterne I spent $750 on (for the little baby sauterne bottle) made me feel like I was getting my full money's worth. But that's not something I'd want to drink regularly.

And no I'm not a high roller who drinks these wines all the time, in fact I haven't in well over a decade. It was a fairly transparent, but successful, status play. Now I stick to highly rated $15-30 a bottle table wines because, in the USA, that's the sweet spot and I'm not interested in spending 10 times as much for a wine that's 20% better.

That's exactly it,gourmet foods in general hold a very nonlinear price premium for that small marginal taste increment. Those increments never match the dollar increments.

Those plastic buckets are ubiquitous in the food industry, but are rarely shown. One company showing the buckets would doubtlessly impact their sales, but what if all companies showed their buckets? Buckets would probably then be perceived by consumers in a more accurate light and probably would not suppress sales nearly as much.

And hence the overall education level, which is what all this is about, would go up. Which is always the answer to the problem. What we have here is a lack of education.

Tours of farms and food factories are great field trips for school kids, but unfortunately I think that possibility is probably regional.

Haha. You and I have a different view of education.

I'm not sure what regions you are thinking about. Most of the US population lives in a place where visits to either farms or food factories are quite tenable. Agricultural extension agencies like 4-H (https://4-h.org/) remain quite willing to take poor kids from inner city New York on field trips out to farms in Connecticut, New Jersey, and the like.

Aside: Contract consumable manufacturing is how most packaged food is made in the US. Essentially, things like packaged cookies, that new craft beer, or frozen enchiladas are all made in the exact same place with the exact same equipment, even brand name, just a different recipe. These places tend to be very tightly controlled in terms of sterility, tastes, particulate matter, mold, ingredient source, etc. Most of those boxes from those central shelves in your Safeway are all from the same handful of places.

They say about brewing beer it's 90% cleaning and 10% record keeping.

I'd wager it's even more extreme with a distillery, since, in addition to a bad tasting batch of gin, people may actually be killed if the output is a faulty product, containing too much methanol.

You would have to royally fuck up for that to happen. Even if you didn't cut the heads and tails, the amount of methanol produced by distilling is relatively low.

Plus it tastes horrible.

I don't know if that a French thing or not, but in France, in many cities there is a day designated as "encombrants" (~ bulky). Basically for when you want to throw out large objects.

There are people roaming out the streets on that day and hoping to find something worth reselling before it gets picked up by the city.

As far as I know, we haven't encountered the issue of too much stuff being thrown out that day, but maybe this is because this happens regularly.

When I lived in Germany it was the same. But rather than people looking to sell item it was people looking to furnish their homes. A great system really.

Good thing there are not many bed bugs in Germany and thrown away furniture

> not many bed bugs in Germany

As a German, it took me until adulthood to figure out that when Americans talk of "bed bugs", it's not a metaphor.

In California you get only one day a year of free pickup for bulky items. Its restricted to appliances, furniture, and mattress. Furthermore, you have to schedule in advance with the company handling your garbage pickup.

Recology SF and San Mateo allots two bulky item pickups per (single family) household per year. Up in Novato/Sonoma it's 4x annually.

This depends entirely on your city government and who they contract with.

I've seen on-call pickup of large items (2 or 3x per year), bulk trash day once per year for everything on the curb, free appointments at a central location, and "haul it to the dump yourself then pay a fee".

I’m pretty sure the San Jose green team offers unlimited free curbside pickup of bulky items. You do need to call to schedule it, but that’s fairly reasonable in my opinion.

I live in Los Angeles, and I can schedule as many free bulky item pickups as I want, at any time.

Yes, I'm French and, on "jour des encombrants", when I put out something which is usable, I always make sure it is obvious, clean and visible... It is usually picked up within the hour by either some student or a junk trader. Conversely, I've found surprisingly useful things to use in my home. I like the spirit of ultralocal reuse !

I've been leaving notes on my interesting stuff when I set it at the curb. Figure I can save someone some time and help them decide if it's a problem they want to tackle, _before_ they get it home and diagnose it.

On a washing machine, I put a note like "Transmission bad, motor and controls probably fine, no leaks."

I don't know if that a French thing or not, but in France, in many cities there is a day designated as "encombrants" (~ bulky). Basically for when you want to throw out large objects.

I had this when I lived in Nevada. It was every other Tuesday and called "bulk trash day." You could put out pretty much anything that wasn't commercial construction waste or hazardous waste.

There were also scavengers who knew when bulk trash day was for each neighborhood, and would drive around the neighborhoods in trucks taking things off the curb to sell at flea markets.

Interesting, that sounds like "encumbrance" which is a good word to describe the burden of owning too much "stuff"! :)

Boston has "Allston Christmas" on Sept 1st each year. Tons of people move. There's lots of nifty stuff on the sidewalks waiting to be discovered.

Madison WI has this around that time from when college students move. I feel like that might be a University-town thing.

If you live in a university town, find out which dorms the international students live in, and locate the nearest trash bins. At the end of spring semester, during finals week, check in and around those bins daily.

The graduating international students who are returning to their home countries frequently discard things that they bought locally, as it may be too expensive to ship larger items in either direction. Those who will be returning in the fall might put their dorm stuff into storage, or they might just toss it, and re-buy if/when they return.

The cheaper it is to ship, store, or sell, the lower the quality of the items discarded. That's why you focus on those who will be flying home.

In Sydney, Australia, there is an annual "council cleanup" day. It rotates around to different areas each week. If I recall correctly, you can put your junk out up to a week early, and people definitely go around looking for good stuff, including professional junk dealers who are looking to fix things up for sale. We got some good things that way. Whatever is left at the end is hauled away by the council.

annoyingly, people would come out and strip wires (for the copper) off appliances. But they tend to do it messily, and leave a big gaping mess everywhere (e.g., smashing up TVs and leave broken shards of glass everywhere).

  I lived in a city that decided to offer a "garbage collection amnesty week"

Santa Clara does this once a year.

I've seen people coming from wherever and dumping their trash on Santa Clara sidewalks (in a neighborhood for whom it's their free pickup week) to save dump costs... including hazardous waste like paint and chemicals.

Heck yeah man, we used to have that around here as well and I found tons of amazing old computer equipment that people had discarded. Every single thing I grabbed still worked. Unfortunately I don't think any municipality around me does this program anymore :(

> There can definitely be value left in someone else's trash.

Many many years ago I put a piece of scrap butcher block on top of the yard waste pile near the street in front of my home. Later that day a Mercedes drove past, stopped, a woman in a suit got out, examined the butcher block, put it in her trunk, and drove off.

I hope it's still serving as a really nice cutting board or some such in someone's home in Miami.

In my area, people make a living driving around and picking up discarded items to fix up and resell.

They have craigslist for this stuff nowadays. In college neighborhoods you can just dump it on the street it will get picked up by some student who needs it.

Craigslist is fine for getting rid of single items. But what if I sort through my drawers and end up with a pile of 100 small things that I want to get rid of? I ain't putting 100 posts on Craigslist (or rather, the local equivalent).

Yeah, this. The problem is not that it's trash, the problem is that its provenance is not being disclosed.

> A friend of mine found a complete metal suit of armor; not really functional

... so you fired arrows at it from a longbow ? And he got injured, then had to explain at the hospital why his friend shot him with an antique weapon ? S'pretty great.