IS there a return on earth?

By Grace Downing, 2022

Published 12/8/20

Did you come home to an Amazon package waiting on your doorstep this afternoon? Did you order something this week? Have you ever had it arrive, then said, “Nope, not what I thought it'd be,”and sent it right back? That seems to be a traditional part of American life today and it’s harmful.

In the United States each year, Americans return over 3.5 billion products from online stores. When you return these items, you probably think they are just going to get repackaged and resold to someone else, right? Wrong. Precisely 88% of the public share this belief. A majority of the returns are in fact, not re-sold and end up elsewhere.

About 5 billion pounds of landfill waste are created every year in the U.S from returns.

What a lot of consumers don’t know and the “e-tailers” (online sellers) don’t advertise is many sellers have supply contracts with companies. For a lot of businesses, the value of products can also be low, it’s cheaper to throw it away. The most often however, is the plain fact that a product is damaged or no longer in season, ending up in, you guessed it, the trash.

As if this wasn’t enough, online return rates pose another threat. Optoro, an organization which helps retailers find new places to resell or donate returned merchandise, estimates that each year returns in the U.S creates about 15 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions; the same amount of emissions that 3 million cars make in an entire year. It is all a result, “just from putting returns in trucks and moving them around, back from the consumers...then on to their next homes,” says Meagan Knowlton, a sustainability manager at Optoro.

As is unlikely for sellers to change their policies, a lot of the responsibility falls on the consumer. We’re all guilty of buying something sometimes when we don’t need it, and end up returning it. This process is most obvious in clothing sales, which have the highest return rate of over 40-50%. Market research firms are calling the bedroom “the new fitting room,”as so many of us are shopping from home during the pandemic

COVID-19 has changed online shopping forever.

The holidays are here and it’s important for us to really rethink purchases and consider if we really need/want certain products. Retailers can give more clear description of products, use energy efficient warehouses, or increase drop off sites. Our cities and states can impose tolls or congestion pricing on delivery trucks. As always, change starts with you.