What Slashed Coach Bags Found in a Dumpster Can Teach Us About Product Waste

A top-down, flat-lay view of six damaged or cut Coach brand handbags and wallets arranged on a plain white background. All the items feature visible, clean-cut tears through the center of the leather or fabric material.

Of all the things I’ve dreamed about pulling out of a dumpster, a luxury leather handbag pretty much tops the list.

I recently spent months digging into the world of dumpster diving, and alas, I did not find a single fancy purse. But the dumpster divers I shadowed during my journey have.

Back in October 2021, Tiffany Roach, a social-media influencer also known as Dumpster Diving Mama, was making her regular rounds of the Dallas–Fort Worth metro area, digging into the trash for treasures that had been thrown away by retail employees. She discovered more than a dozen Coach bags and shoes in a dumpster behind a mall with a Coach Outlet. “Look. Look at it. Just look at it,” she declared in a video documenting her find. “Is there more?”

Indeed, yes. Her companions pulled multiple slashed bags out of the trash. “Duuuude, they destroyed them,” Roach said.

But why? Why are companies destroying and trashing perfectly good products?

As I tried to answer this question for our feature article on dumpster diving, I knew that the reason had to be more nuanced than the whims of cartoon-villain CEOs twirling their mustaches, poking their walking sticks at their employees, and commanding them to trash usable stuff.

The truth is, it’s expensive and complicated for companies to deal with excess products after they’re out in the world. Donating and recycling aren’t always cost-effective solutions for companies.

Coach is not the only company to be caught with slashed items in the trash. It also isn’t the only brand that has made efforts towards circularity, the idea of eliminating waste by keeping materials and products in use. But as I dug deeper into Coach and how it operates, I was struck by how its story served as a parable of sorts about how hard it really is to get these things right.



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