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Watch 13,000 Boxes of Girl Scout Cookies Get Crushed by Heavy Machinery

Scout cookies in a cardboard box getting crushed by a tractor.
Scout cookies in a cardboard box getting crushed by a tractor. Photo: CBS

Look away, lovers of Samoas and Tagalongs: 13,200 boxes of unexpired, “perfectly fine” Girl Scout cookies were crushed by a tractor in Redlands last spring and then sent to a landfill. A CBS investigation finds the Southern California region’s scout council pinning the blame for all this waste on ABC Bakery, which supplies the troops with their product and destroyed the cookies when a local troop bought more than they could offload. The devastation-by-tractor is basically how the unsold extras get disposed of around these parts, a policy set to change now that food banks and churches are catching wind of the practice. “We would have gladly accepted the cookies and they would probably disappear as fast as any product we have in here,” says a Westside Food Bank rep. Indeed, the deliberate waste makes good old destruction pretty hard to stomach. Nonetheless, take a look as oh-so-many Thin Mints meet the big metal death machine in this video.

Investigation: Why Were More Than 13,000 Boxes Of Perfectly Fine Girl Scout Cookies Tossed? [CBS]

Watch 13,000 Boxes of Girl Scout Cookies Get Crushed by Heavy Machinery