Online shopping companies love a good return policy. It’s ideal for the consumer to use the free returns when a product arrives in poor quality, doesn’t fit right, or is simply the wrong thing. Mistakes happen and products are sent to the wrong people. Corners are cut and quality is not prioritized. Sizing charts are done incorrectly. These are common issues when using the convenience of online shopping, so the companies might as well provide “free” returns. The thing is, nothing is ever free. Someone always pays the price. Once again, mother Earth takes on the burden of emissions and waste so the big companies can make as much money as they can.
As returns come in so often, companies would rather not spend the money or time to sort through everything. This leads to the products being sold to liquidation stores, donated, or trashed. At one point : you could count on the returned products to be put back on the shelf with in person shopping. Now, as returns are so popular, even in person stores are shipping out their products instead of restocking. This is something that goes unspoken as producers don’t want to discourage the consumer from using the returns policy. Returns create an illusion to spend more. Hoping people will think, “oh, if it doesn’t work for me – I will just send it back. No harm done,” . And of course, when the conversation of environmental concern comes into play, the producers place the blame on consumers. Never trying to take incentive to reduce the issues at hand.
What Happens After Returning The Goodies?
A lot of people don’t realize , and even me before I started doing the research, that when you return clothes bought online many of them don’t get resold directly from the site. A lot of brands like Amazon have a returns collection area that box up everything rather than sorting, and sell the returns to a liquidation store.Majority of liquidation stores will have huge cardboard boxes full of miscellaneous things from bathroom decor to kitchen supplies, or dog toys to tech accessories. You name it, and you can probably find it. The sorting that the online stores avoid gets passed on to the consumers as the liquidation shops just buy the crates, open them up, and let people find what they can.These centers also sell large mystery boxes which is super enticing because everyone loves a mystery. It could be 500 spider man figurines. Of course, you’d score big time if it was.
The liquidation centers are a pretty cool concept. On the other hand: when buying these mystery boxes a lot of people feel like they just bought a big box of random things. Because that’s literally what they did. And usually, people don’t have a use for it. So, it either sits in their house or they try to sell it. The possible resale value is a common reason for people purchasing mystery boxes. There’s a chance to spend $500 and get a handful of high pricing items to make some money back. Though, there’s also a risk of getting a bunch of spider man figurines. If you didn’t notice the sarcasm before – this would not be a win.
Companies also donate their returns or overstock to charities. For instance, Amazon along with big box stores like Walmart or Target have partnered with Good360. Good360 is a non-profit organization that provides product donations from socially responsible companies to charities serving people in need. Not only helping people in need, but avoids leaving usable products in the landfill. Good360’s mission is to close the need gap to open opportunities for all. And they have been going strong for 40+ years. As per aboutamazon.com in 2022 ,Amazon has donated 100 million returns in just 3 years of being partnered with Good360 in 2019. Not to burst any bubbles because this is an amazing amount of donations, but on average 80,000 returns are made a day to Amazon. With these numbers, within those 3 years there would only be 87 million returns. I’m just saying the averages released can’t be legit. I couldn’t find anything on Amazon’s site with return numbers being released to the public, so I’m wondering how many returns do they receive and how many are donated, how many are sold again, and how many end up in the landfill.
Unfortunately, many returns are sent to the landfill. For some retailers, it’s more cost-effective to discard returns than to process and resell them—over 9.5 billion pounds of returns were landfilled in 2022. The fashion industry is particularly wasteful, with return rates as high as 40% for garments in 2018, making it one of the biggest contributors to this growing problem. Instead of finding a way to give a product a second chance, or just not producing low quality products in general, companies leave the returns in the landfill. And these returns pile up and wait to decompose for up to 500 years (saying 500 years as most things are made of plastic). Returning products are kind of like gambling. You may send something back and it can be donated to someone in need. Or it can be sold to liquidation stores. Or just tossed in the landfill. The issues are often put off on the consumers, when the producers are banking on us to buy, buy, buy. If you get something that you think may not be resold; whether it’s broken, poor quality, or just a cheap product in general – it may be best trying to give it another life, or throwing it away on your own terms to avoid extra emissions. With purchasing and returning goods, there are many emissions involved.
Big Scary Emissions
No matter what is done with the returns whether it be sent to liquidators, donated, or sent to the landfill – they are thrown on a truck, driving to a couple of different return centers and most of the time find themselves in a landfill. At times, returns are put on a boat to be transported to another country to be thrown in a landfill. In 2024, returns generated an estimated 29 million metric tons of carbon emissions, and 9.8 billion pounds of returns ended up in landfills, according to reverse logistics software provider Optoro. That is a crazy amount of CO₂ just in the journey of the products alone. Not counting the production emissions. It’s like making something, shipping it across the world then driving it around the country a couple of times, just to be thrown out. Researchers estimate that the carbon footprint of a single return shipment can be as high as 16 pounds of CO₂, especially when multiple transportation steps are involved. I think if it was a conversation that didn’t have a stigma behind it; more people would avoid returning as much as they do. Of course, it’s understandable why consumers would want free returns. Though, I don’t know if it’s something that is commonly thought about.
What Could Be Done About All This Return Business?
So, what changes would help? Having an honest talk about something convenient may not be the best idea. I don’t believe that this falls completely on the consumer, it is the business that large online companies have created and don’t do their part to solve the waste and emission issues. Though, on the other hand, producers always try to do whatever they can to keep us spending money. If free shipping makes us happy, they’re going to do it. One solution would be for brands to have accurate sizing charts and for the consumers to know how to measure themselves before purchasing. Or having the translations be accurate for the consumer to ensure they know what they’re purchasing. Another large solution would be for companies to implement in person drop off centers. This would help the concern with emissions and less likely send products straight to the landfill without evaluating them first. Employees would be able to evaluate products more thoroughly then they would at the shipping sites when they finally get there. But I doubt someone at a company like Amazon is reading this, if you are, think outside the box and spend some extra money on sustainability. I know you got it. All in all, the big guys have a lot to do with our environmental issues. But that doesn’t mean not to try and make a change in our everyday living. Small changes lead to big ones. Thank you for reading!
Citations
https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/operations/amazon-donates-100-million-returned-items-to-nonprofits May, 2022
https://www.retailtouchpoints.com/topics/consumer-trends/nrf-for-every-1b-in-sales-retailers-incur-166m-in-returns Jan, 2022https://shaku.tech/blogs/think-twice-before-you-return-the-hidden-environmental-cost-of-online-returns Jan, 2025
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