The report, published on Monday on ITV’s website, comes as the online retailer embarks on its “Prime Day,” offering deals on thousands of products over June 21-22.

It found that the items that were scrapped were ones that were never sold, or returned by customers. Instead of being given away, all of the items were thrown into bins and taken away by trucks to recycling centers or landfill sites.

A former employee, speaking on condition of anonymity, told ITV: “From a Friday to a Friday our target was to generally destroy 130,000 items a week.

“I used to gasp. There’s no rhyme or reason to what gets destroyed: Dyson fans, Hoovers, the occasional MacBook and iPad; the other day, 20,000 Covid (face) masks still in their wrappers.”

“Overall, 50 percent of all items are unopened and still in their shrink wrap. The other half are returns and in good condition. Staff have just become numb to what they are being asked to do.”

A leaked document in April from inside the warehouse showed that more than 124,000 items were marked to be destroyed, in just seven days. ITV reported that in contrast, only 28,000 items in that same period were labeled “donate.”

The former employee told the news channel that in some weeks, as many as 200,000 items could be destroyed.

“We are working towards a goal of zero product disposal and our priority is to resell, donate to charitable organisations or recycle any unsold products. No items are sent to landfill in the UK. As a last resort, we will send items to energy recovery, but we’re working hard to drive the number of times this happens down to zero,” a spokesperson said.

“We are committed to reducing our environmental footprint and building a circular economy programme with the aim of reducing returns, reusing and reselling products, and reducing disposals.”

Newsweek has contacted environmental groups for comment.

Sam Chetan Welsh, a political campaigner at Greenpeace, told ITV: “It’s an unimaginable amount of unnecessary waste, and just shocking to see a multi-billion pound company getting rid of stock in this way.