Girl Scout Cookies Destroyed: More Than 13,200 Boxes Dumped in Landfill

One of the only good things about this dreary time of year is Girl Scout cookies sale season, which is apparently more than 13,000 boxes short right now. After the San Gorgonio Girl Scout Council reportedly overestimated the amount of cookies they could sell, they trashed 13,200 boxes of edible, unexpired treats, as they wouldn't have been able to get a refund for the goodies.

All the reports on this senseless, tragic waste beg the question: why couldn't the council donate the cookies rather than dump them in a landfill? Why not give the cookies away to schools? Granted, we're trying to eliminate obesity in schools right now, but five Tagalongs with a cup of cold milk aren't enough to make a child blow up like a balloon.

The waste, however, may have been out of the council's hands. Chuck MacKinnon of the San Gorgonio Council of the Girl Scouts in Redlands, Calif., told the Christian Post he'd been unaware of how the cookies would be handled and certainly didn't expect them to be dumped in a landfill. 

“To look at it, it’s a waste of food,” MacKinnon explained to CBS Los Angeles. “Is it the Girl Scout way? No. Did it happen? Yes. Will it happen again? No.”

I sure hope not.

MacKinnon added that the council's policy is to give away unsold cookies, and donated more than 10,000 boxes in 2012. He would have happily given away the cookies this year, but so it goes...

CBS Los Angeles broke the story of the great Girl Scout Cookie Dumping of 2013, having found a video of a tractor breaking down cookie boxes in a warehouse. As the tractor flattens the cookie boxes, a giddy worker can be heard laughing and saying in the background, "Goodbye, Girl Scout cookies!"

To the aforementioned giggler: Congratulations! I'm pretty sure you're worse than the Grinch.