Graduate student Cynthia Magnus found bags of clothes destroyed and trashed by H&M and Wal Mart.

“Gloves with the fingers cut off,” Ms. Magnus said, reciting the inventory of ruined items. “Warm socks. Cute patent leather Mary Jane school shoes, maybe for fourth graders, with the instep cut up with a scissor. Men’s jackets, slashed across the body and the arms. The puffy fiber fill was coming out in big white cotton balls.” The jackets were tagged $59, $79 and $129.

The Times reporter added that Wal-Mart’s clothes have also been found trashed:

It is winter. A third of the city is poor. And unworn clothing is being destroyed nightly.

I’ll bet any underpaid employee caught saving a pair of shoes from the wrecker so they give their child something for Christmas would be fired. There’s only one thing that can cause this kind of malignant stupidity. Greed. Enabled by tax laws that let them use and waste the Earth’s resources and the labor of underpaid workers and deduct it as a loss. Don’t think these two stores are the only ones that do this kind of thing.

A pox on them all. Let’s slice off their tax exemptions when they think it’s easier to throw merchandise away rather than take the trouble to donate or sell it elsewhere.

AND FURTHERMORE: the destroyed clothes were waiting to be picked up and sent to the landfill. As if NYC doesn’t have enough trash. How sad that when some of us ‘repair, reuse and recycle’ and Rhode Island has an exchange so that people can find someone who wants their old radio or whatever ( I got rid of 2 aquarium tanks that way), a big corporation can turn brand new clothes into garbage just so they can ensure that no one will wear them for free. Scabies on all your houses, all you superstores.

My New Years Resolution is to lose weight and fit into my old clothes.

UPDATE: Public shaming via what’s left of the free press has spurred H&M to promise that they will stop vandalizing and discarding their unsold clothing.