Returns Kill
And...... return, return, return.
It adds up to a heap of waste and an environmental nightmare.
Recent studies of e-commerce suggest that lenient return policies correlate with more returns and an increase in purchases. As far back as 2010, Zappos.com, the pioneering shoe retailer, bragged that its best customers were the ones who returned the most products.
The problem is that consumers are returning more and more every year. In 2018, Americans sent back 10% of their purchases, valued at $369 billion, according to data and software firm Appriss, up from 8% two years earlier.
Younger shoppers in particular are more inclined to treat online purchases as rentals, or to buy clothing to try on, then return what doesn’t fit or look good. It’s a global trend: In Sweden, return rates are as high as 60% for some products.
But the high cost of transporting, sorting, and repackaging those goods also ensures that billions of pounds of returns end up in landfills and incinerators.
Making matters worse, getting those products from a dissatisfied customer’s home to wherever they’ll end up is a carbon-heavy process.
While e-commerce has made shopping much more convenient (for some), it's made inefficient stewardship of Earth's limited resources more convenient too.
And that sucks.
Grace & Peace & Love to you all -
Matt
