Online Shopping Leads to Clothes in Landfills

Picture this: Your favorite clothing store is having a huge online sale - 30-70% off all items. They spam you with email marketing and social ads and you finally check it out but you have no idea what size you might wear in that tee or your shoe size varies depending on the style. So you end up buying two sizes with the idea to return the one that doesn't work for you. They're brand new so there should be no issue with returning - simple, right? Well, what you might not know is that your favorite fashion company doesn't have a team of inspectors for their returns, so they simply throw those returns in the garbage bin. Brand new, no damages. Straight to the landfill.

According to BBC Earth's article on clothing returns, over 5 billion pounds of waste is generated through returns in the world. "Each year in the US alone, customers return approximately 3.5 billion products, of which only 20% are actually defective according to Optoro, a company which specialises in returns logistics." Not only do millions of pounds of waste occur every single year but some companies have even opted to destroy the returns and extra clothing, contributing to "over 15 million metric tons of carbon dioxide going into the Earth's atmosphere." Much famously in 2018, Burberry was called out for their destroy methods on unsold or "damaged" products. Although Burberry was called out for this, other companies also still destroy their products to this day, like Nike and H&M according to Vox's article on this matter.

Why would a company destroy or throw away perfectly good clothing and shoes instead of just giving them away to charity or possibly remaking the goods? It's what it everything always comes down to - money. In CBC's article Returned online purchases often sent to landfills... "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 bringing this back to the original analogy from the start of this blog post - it's highly likely your favorite company does not have the resource or the funds to put together a team of individuals to scope out all returns worldwide.

There are some companies who are trying to combat this exact issue, with one of my favorites being Patagonia. The outdoor brand created a branch division called "Worn Wear" where you can take your slightly damaged or old pieces to a physical (if you live in California) or online store to be repaired. You can also shop used pieces rather than buying new. Other companies are taking to apps to buy/resell clothing that might otherwise be destroyed. Sustainable Brands has a great article on these new apps here.

It's easy to call out these flaws... but what can you, as the consumer, do about this issue? Here are a few points to think about:

• Reduce your online shopping - yes, those sales might be enticing... but it costs a lot of money to get those items to you, much less if you want to return them.

• If you do online shop, only buy what you need - more often than not, we buy way more than what we need. Sure, those pants are the latest trend and fast fashion is shouting from the rooftops for you to buy the product but think long and hard about whether you need it and if it's something that will last you a while. I am hugely guilty of buying into fast fashion... so this one is definitely hard for me to combat.

• Buy second hand - guys, thrift shopping is SOOO in right now. Who doesn't want a badass leather jacket from the 70s? Buying second hand gives clothing another chance at life. Also, if you're looking to get rid of clothes, try selling them to your local thrift store first and donate next. There is a chance someone will think those old booties are the perfect addition to their next outfit.

Photo by Jilbert Ebrahimi on Unsplash