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from the to-the-dump-to-the-dump-to-the-dump-dump-dump dept.
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: 5, Insightful) by VLM on Saturday December 14 2019, @03:33PM
The general public never thinks of latency, but consider that my wife's new puppy calendar for 2020 was probably designed a year ago, printed months ago, slow boat from China in the fall, and finally arrives at my house, and if it gets returned on Dec 26 by the time it could be shipped and prepped for resale, its essentially worthless.
Extends to non-time specific products, like how well can you expect to sell an "OK Boomer" tee shirt a year from now, so if they ordered enough shirts made by slave labor and political prisoners overseas to last the entire length of the fad plus some, because the markup on clothing and shoes is like 10000000% and a shoe costs 10 cents to make overseas even if it sells in the USA for $150, well, just chuck it out, there's literally a warehouse full of enough disposable crap to last the entire meme / fad / style. Its not like a "6/32 machine screw pan head 3/4 inch" that has a sellable lifespan of a couple centuries.
Another interesting latency like concept is some products like shoes have been quality engineered to only last six months, maybe less, to increase sales, while retaining the "its gonna last a couple years" full quality price. So in a metaphysical sense, every shitty meme tee shirt will be in the landfill in six months, not just the ones that were returned. They're all going to be in the landfill; the one that got washed ten times and the screen print looks awful now, the one that unraveled in the wash the first time it was washed, the one that got sent back for being falsely labeled with the wrong size, the one that was worn every week for many months until it wasn't stylish anymore, the one that never sold and the meme is dead now so it'll never be sold again, etc. Every single meme tee shirt shipped from China will be in the landfill in a couple months, just via different paths. So in a sense it doesn't matter what the specific path is for a specific shirt, every shirt arriving on the boat will be in the trash in a couple months. So... yeah... it don't matter than returns go in the trash can, everything arriving from the overseas printer is going in the trash one way or another so ...