Ulta Dumpster Diving

As we read about dumpster diving this week, it reminded me of something my sister, who works at Ulta, told me. Much like the pizzas that were thrown away that Lars Eighner told about, Ulta throws away makeup and hair products that are used and then returned, as well as overstock from limited collections. This is pretty wasteful since the products can cost upwards of $50. But, not to my surprise, much like people taking the unwanted pizza, a lot of girls will dumpster dive at Ulta and take the unwanted makeup. To teens and college students, free makeup is a major score. Ulta however, is not a fan of people, who usually aren't living on the streets, rummaging through their dumpsters at night to take these treasures. My sister told me that at first, it went unnoticed, and the stolen product wasn't missed. But after teens leaving messes around the dumpsters that she had to clean up the next day, the store began to take action. They started by squeezing out the remains of sticky hair products onto the makeup packaging to make them less likely to get taken, which is called "souping". The gooey hair gel was no match for the thieves, as they still foraged for makeup, disregarding the various things now stuck to the products, glued on by sticky messes. To try and fight back again, Ulta employees began slashing eyeshadow pallets with a knife to ruin the powders inside, and leaving the caps off of liquid products so they would no longer be sanitary. To the makeup chain store's dismay, this didn't ward the teens off either. You can find on Youtube a huge amount of videos about "Ulta Dumpster Diving Hauls", where people show their finds, broken, dirty and sticky, and show you how to sanitize or repair the ruined makeup. They also document their trips to the dumpster and show the bags of makeup being discarded. Sometimes the youtube video makers will even resell the found makeup for a lower price. While im unsure if this is right or not, it is very interesting how people are making good money off of dumpster makeup.

 Ulta Dumpster Diving Haul: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYv7INAPfjU