PetSmart's current policy is to throw away unused food, bedding, toys, cages, and more in each and every store! This adds up to untold amount of waste in landfills and $1,000s of dollars worth of items that could benefit non-profit animal welfare charities. This needs to stop--but it won't without your voice! While they collect our dollars at the register by asking for donations, they're throwing out goods that could help needy animals in each location because they've contracted as such with their vendors. Please sign this petition and tell PetSmart to change their policy! Please see the response below from their Customer Service Team. Although the response focuses on mostly the food and not the non-food items (and they tout the good they do with OUR DONATIONS), they are considering this change for 2012 (highlighted in red)--let's tell them we want it to happen and we want it to happen now!

Email from PetSmart (01.09.12):

Thank you for contacting PetSmart regarding our damaged goods policy.

We do instruct our stores to destroy pet food products that have been damaged. We recognize that this isn't a popular policy. On the surface, one could easily conclude that it's simply a matter of picking up the damanged bag and giving it away. But in truth, it's a much more complicated and challanging problem given the volume of products we deal with in our stores.

Damaged food bags can expose the food to contamination which poses a health risk to pets so we do not donate expired food that may be spoiled.

Damaged foods also create storage and distribution challenges for our stores. For example, our stores have extremely limited storage space and it becomes a problem to store damaged goods until they can be picked up by a deserving local animal welfare organization. Our distribution centers acorss the country have a rather robust food donation program and donate thousands of pounds of food annually to local animal welfare groups.  

We are excited to let you know that we are currently exploring opportunities for donation cof discontinued non-food items in our stores. We hope to have more information on this program in 2012.  

We admire the passion you show for pets. We share that passion. That’s why as a company we continue to support PetSmart Charities, a separate non-profit organization dedicated to saving the lives of homeless pets. We do this by donating valuable retail space in every one of our stores to facilitate pet adoptions and voluntarily feeding and housing thousands of these pets daily as they await adoption. And we’re proud that more than 1,000 well-fed and -cared for pets find new homes each day because of our in-store Adoption Centers and the dedicated efforts of our 2,000 adoption partners. Together we have helped to save the lives of over 4.7 million homeless pets.

Through PetSmart Charities we provide grands and other resources to local and national organizations to combat the problem of pet overpopulation. This includes grants for spay and neuter and educational programs, exceeding $134 million to date. We also donate food, products and support in times of crisis such as hurricanes and fires.

Countless animal welfare groups that have approached us at the local level for food or other products to meet an emergency need are almost alway accomodated. And the goods and services they receive from us are new, not damanged or discarded goods.

Although we can understand why you might feel the way you do, we hope that you'll have more understanding of our policy and perhaps a better and more informed opinion of PetSmart's commitment to pets, particularly those that are down and out.

Thank you again for letting us know about your concerns.