Online Shopping Returns End Up in Landfills.
barbara hudson writes:
The CBC's "The Current" has a story about how online returns are frequently sent to the dump
'It's pretty staggering': Returned online purchases often sent to landfill, journalist's research reveals
Do you order different sizes of clothing online, knowing you can return the one that doesn't fit?
Did you know the ones you return are sometimes sent straight to landfill?
Online shopping has created a boom in perfectly good products ending up in dumpsters and landfills, according to Adria Vasil, an environmental journalist and managing editor of Corporate Knights magazine.
Amazon has faced accusations of destroying returned items in both France and Germany.
The issue also affects unsold products. Burberry admitted in 2018 that it had incinerated 90 million worth of clothing and accessories in the previous five years. The company stopped the policy last year after a public outcry.
Why? You're returning something that's new and fine?
It actually costs a lot of companies more money to put somebody on the product, to visually eyeball it and say, Is this up to standard, is it up to code? Is this going to get us sued? Did somebody tamper with this box in some way? And is this returnable? And if it's clothing, it has to be re-pressed and put back in a nice packaging. And for a lot of companies, it's just not worth it. So they will literally just incinerate it, or send it to the dumpster
So when you order 3 sizes "to be sure you get the one you want", two of them are probably going to the dump. Not very environmentally friendly..
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