I hear you, I hear you and here's my two stories:
Once at Large Chain Supermarket I found some lamb chops on special. Took them to the self serve checkouts but the item didn't scan. The team member had a look and said, it's because it's past its expiry date ( the date was the day before). The meat was in perfect condition though, no dark spots or dry edges or any discoloration. So I asked if I could take it for free, and she said no, and she put it in the trash bin right next to the checkout.
Now I'm not blaming her since I understand that's what she has to say since it's her job, and I also understand the supermarket would be liable if they sold me something that caused me food poisoning. But I believe the real motivation is profits. It would be all to easy to have a law saying supermarkets are not liable for expired items if they are taken for free; but if that was the case most people would be waiting for the nearly expired items and sales would plummet. I think this is messed up, I don't know. I have no idea about what do supermarkets do with fresh nearly expired food but I have the naive hope they at least use some for their bakery/rotisserie section.
(I took the meat out of the bin after paying for my other groceries so I did, in the end, get it for free. And it was delicious)
The other story happened while working for Well Known Retailer. I had to grab a wheelie cart/trolley or whatever they're called, to put stock on the floor. But the only cart left was full with old merchandise. So the manager led us to where the big dumpster bins were, and said, okay help me chuck these out. And she started throwing away all these very expensive scented candles in perfect condition with no other flaw than being old. I'm talking about $30 - $50 candles. I asked if I could take some for free, and she said we weren't allowed. I asked about buying them with a discount, and she said that was also not allowed because the items weren't even part of the inventory anymore. So we just trashed roughly $1500 worth of merchandise. It's just messed, those could have gone to a Salvation Army store or something instead of getting dumped (and broken in the process).
Sweet, I see in the comments many others have an extension for this. Crazy I didn't even think about it as an option!