For the past year, Anna Sacks has been picking through the garbage outside the stores of a pharmacy chain to retrieve merchandise she says is unnecessarily thrown out.
As she went from CVS to CVS, she picked through three trash bags outside one store in Midtown. In less than 10 minutes, she recovered about $100 worth of merchandise – from vitamins to food to drinks to makeup and much more. In one bag, she found a bottle of vitamins with a price tag of $41. It was not expired and was still sealed.
Sacks says this is typical of what she retrieves. “There was a lot of merchandise that was superficially damaged,” said Sacks. “CVS’ policy is, instead of donating them or letting employees take them home, they throw them out.”
Sacks says she reached out to CEO of the company and spoke to a regional manager who told her they’ve gotten permission to partner with charities. “I waited about a month from the initial conversation, I continued to see a lot of waste,” she said. “It seems like no difference, so I started the change.org petition.”
The online petition is called “Tell CVS to Donate, Don’t Dump” and it’s already garnered several hundred thousand signatures. With the goal of changing hearts and minds, she wants to encourage people to pressure the drug store giant to end what she refers to as extreme waste.
“It’s excessive and it’s unnecessary,” said Sacks. “It’s literally millions of pounds of useful merchandise they’re throwing out. It’s almost 10,000 stores across the United States.”