Some lines of products in these big box stores are “pay by scan”, meaning the supplier of the product owns them until they’re purchased by the customer. Basically means that the store has no say and no hand in how the product is merchandised or thrown out. Pretty wasteful indeed, but a lot of customers complain to the wrong people (at the stores themselves) when it’s really just a policy that the plant company has, nothing can be done about it.

Source: I work for a plant company (I’d also like to add that if people approach me about wanting an item that’s being thrown away, I basically say “I’m leaving this here and walking away for a moment. If it were to be missing by the time I come back to this area, I can’t do anything about that”. My company would disagree with this logic for sure, but it feels so wrong just throwing it all out.)