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Comment by seabass-labrax | Hacker News Reader

I can completely understand the concern with a compromised promotional website listed on the packaging, but a full product recall seems to me extremely wasteful. Presumably, all those bags (which look to me like they're made of plastic) will have to be disposed of, if not the actual biscuits themselves.

This is just one factor in a multitude of reasons why single-use plastics are wasteful, but I believe that if a company is not responsible enough to look after a URL they should not be plastering it all over consumer products.

A URL is for life, not just for Christmas. Not sure whether to link to the Dogs Trust or the W3C here!

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This is why there's a "starving kids in Africa" meme. The amount of perfectly good product that goes to waste in "developed" countries is certainly one of the most infuriating things about modern life. Perhaps future historians will also comment on this point as they unearth perfect artifacts from landfills.

The pragmatic approach would be to put a small piece of opaque tape over the offending text and put the product back on the shelves. I've seen that happen with nutritional information on imported products, where the original label printed on the packaging presumably didn't meet the legal requirements and thus a new one was put over it.

This is just one factor in a multitude of reasons why single-use plastics are wasteful

IMHO that's not the real worry here --- that would've ended up in landfill or been incinerated anyway regardless of the recall, and it's a tiny amount of waste relative to the rest of the otherwise usable product.

Realistically is anyone actually going to return these products because of the URL though?

I'd assume it's more damage control in the event someone actually does visit the URL because then they can say, "well we have recalled these products, sir".

All of the product still in stock in the shop or warehouse will be chucked out at the suppliers expense.

Well, our expense since we impose a system that makes this possible.

Yeah I don't think anyone will.

> all those bags will have to be disposed of, if not the actual biscuits themselves.

Nobody will repackage the biscuits. That is not a thing any manufacturer or merchant would seriously consider. Of course it will be disposed of.

Just imagine the liability of selling a food product which already come back from a costumer.

An alternative interpretation is that the cost-of-materials is insignificant related to brand dilution and/or the intended promotional value of the URLs themselves.

The biscuits may very well have simply been a flytrap of sorts (honey), or loss-leader. Disposing of them given that the URL is itself no longer useful might well be the pragmatic approach.

I also doubt the public will return sold product, though they might take actions against the packaging itself. I'd hope that unsold stock will be diverted to food banks or other noncommercial distributors, though possibly with a provision that packaging be covered (stickers or labels?) or removed prior to final distribution.

"An alternative interpretation is that the cost-of-materials is insignificant related to brand dilution and/or the intended promotional value of the URLs themselves."

Cost will be some fraction of the retail price. But that's coming from a streamlined production + packaging pipeline.

As soon as you'd choose to repackage product, then you need a whole lot of hands (people) to do that. And then cost of repackaged product easily goes to 2..5x what it was on the first run.

That's not worth it for manufacturer. Profit is lost on that batch, disposal is the next cheapest option.

Sometimes there are alternatives, like food banks, or use as cattle feed. But often not (or manufacturer is too lazy / doesn't care).

Does anyone actually visit random URLs on food they buy? It must be less than 1% of people doing that so I don’t see why that would make them any money? (it says this is the URL of the supplier, so it’s probably not something that people would want to visit like a game)

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