> As if companies are just out here wantonly destroying otherwise valuable goods that could have been easily sold at a profit instead.

I remember watching a documentary in which they tracked a package of coffee returned to amazon (unopened). It traveled through half of Europe to end up in an incinerator in Slovakia, which is funny because amazon doesn't even operate there.

Big companies are doing a lot of weird shit because at their scale if it's even 1ct cheaper to burn 10 coffee pods vs reprocessing them back in their store it's going to make a huge difference in the long run.