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. .
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 14 2019, @01:02PM (3 children)
You would see headlines like these:
Man caught herpes from returned pants!
Woman sues after bedbugs from returned sofa infest home!
(Score: 4, Informative) by barbara hudson on Saturday December 14 2019, @03:00PM (2 children)
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Saturday December 14 2019, @03:23PM (1 child)
Last time I got a mattress it arrived in plastic and wasn't removed from the protective bag until it was pushed and shoved into its final resting place in the house. So, yeah, I guess in theory its possible, but given that most delivery trucks are not exactly surgically clean to begin with and lot of mattresses are white or light colored I'm really not feeling like a new mattress would arrive "naked". Like... what if its raining on delivery date, they're gonna deliver a soggy mattress? So its gonna be in a bag.
Now a REALLY sketchy store might be more of a mattress rotation business, "well heck, this used mattress looks new, and we got $600 to deliver a mattress to the next house, and technically we'd be delivering a mattress, so I'm just saying we COULD sell the actual new mattress twice..."
(Score: 3, Informative) by barbara hudson on Saturday December 14 2019, @04:11PM
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.