America’s top retailer, Walmart, is known to place the well-being and best interests of both its employees and consumers first. However, it has recently come to the attention of many that employees are unhappy about certain patterns practised at stores. Consumers also spoke up about their unhappiness and concerns about the same pattern. This is the situation the retailer has when it comes to its freezers. For some reason, the freezers in the retail stores go down every week, which leads to food waste.
Details about the employees’ unhappiness
Several employees and consumers shared their unhappiness about the outages of freezers in Walmart stores. A longtime employee of the retail giant made a Reddit post about in-store freezers that are emptied regularly. The contents of the freezer are then dumped when labels expire, or freshness guidelines are lapsed.
This is a massive concern that the company will have to respond to. The employee further alluded to the fact that they worked in several states and a handful of stores, and that they did not see a store that did not have issues with their freezers. She further added that, “At this location every day one section or another is down. We’re constantly stocking and pulling the merch.” This is the information she shared in her original post and also concluded by asking the public, “How bad is it in yours?”
In addition, several other Walmart employees responded to this post, by sharing photos and anecdotes of the while freezer bins cleared. In addition, one of the Reddit users stated that the local Walmart store had the entire freezer section down for over a week and that this seems to happen a lot. Another user added that the old store where they work, the freezers would go down every week. It comes to a point where it is truly annoying and frustrating to take out the products from the freezers and to throw it away, the user said.
The importance of food waste
Wasting food is never a good option, there are always better ways to deal with it. Food waste that occurs in grocery chains is not just about the waste of groceries or refrigerators that were down; but it is about the climate and community failure. When food is being tossed into landfills rots and releases methane, an extremely dangerous and harmful polluting gas driving global temperature rise.
Therefore, the corporate dumping of edible food does not only contribute to environmental harm. Instead, it also deepens social divisions, especially when it comes to families who are in need, and who struggle to access nutritious food. Something that is even worse, is the fact that wasted food inevitably raises prices. The reason for this is because retailers factor losses into their margins and damages consumer trust at a time when there is an increase of food insecurity.
Walmart’s intervention for this problem
It has been made known that Walmart is trying to address this issue. According to the retail giant’s sustainability report, it highlights the company’s commitment to reducing food waste by 50% by 2030. Also, it places emphasis on the partnerships that will occur with food banks.
However, it is important to note that proactive efforts may not always result into every storefront. As stated by a commenter, “At one of my old stores it was like once a month we had to throw away the entire meat wall because it was going down overnight and the manager wouldn’t check.”
Furthermore, across the country, many businesses and communities are stepping up to address the challenge of food waste. When the opportunity present itself, the first and best option is always to donate. Instead of wasting food, edible food can be donated to local shelters and food banks. This is an approach that one of the Kroger stores in Arkansas implemented that quickly rerouted food to the Arkansas Foodbank after a power outage.