Returning an online order has never been so easy. It is often free for the client, and some retailers even allow customers to stay with the article while offering a complete refund.

Amazon returns can be left in Kohl’s, UPS or Whole Foods without packaging them or even printing a label.

But there is a darker side in the record number of returns that flood the warehouses after the holidays.

"Of all these returns, almost 6 billion pounds of landfills a year and also 16 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions, said Tobin Moore, executive director of the Optoro Returns Solutions, are generated."That is the equivalent of waste produced by 3.3 million Americans in a year."

Moore says that online purchases are at least three times more likely to be returned than the items bought in a store. In 2021, a record of 761 billion dollars in merchandise was returned, according to estimates of a new report of the FederationNational retailers.

That report says that 10.3% of those returns were fraudulent. They are so much, Amazon's external vendors told CNBC that they end up throwing around a third of returned items.

"Someone has to pay for that," said Micah Clausen, who sells parties for parties and household items on Amazon under a third -party store called Iconikal. "Amazon or the external seller is turning to.It leaves its background and inevitably causes prices to rise. ”

UPS predicts that the Christmas season of 2021 will see a 10 % increase in returns compared to the period of the previous year, which translates into more waste and expenses for all online retailers.

At the head of the group, Amazon has received increasing criticism for the destruction of millions of articles.to vendors such as Clausen new options to resell returns or send them to be auctioned in the liquidation market.

Meredith Diggs, director of Marketing for Consumption of Liquidity Services, explains a way in which electronic commerce has normalized the purchase habits that lead to more returns.

"Costume [IS] where people orders the same in three different sizes to see which one fits well and then returns the other two, without realizing that these other two most of the time do not return to the shelves of that retailer"Said Diggs.

"Categories such as clothing have very, very high return rates in 10 percent," added Raunak Nirmal, who used to work at Amazon and now directs a Amazon, acquco aggregator, with more than 40 third -party brands. Its rate of rate ofReturn is closer to 3%.

“If it is a new product, Amazon would allow this product to resort to the list as new, but it really must be in perfect condition for that to happen and that is more rare than it would be expected, even if the customer has not done so”Used the product at all, ”said Nirmal.

When an article cannot be sold as new, Amazon gives the seller up to four options on what to do with returns: each with a rate: return to the seller, elimination, liquidation or (by invitation only for now) compliance byAmazon qualify and resell.

With the return to the seller option, the return leaves the Amazon warehouse for several more stages in a truck, plane or loading boat. Request the seller for later processing, then you could go to another Amazon warehouse to classify it and put it back, and then to a new client, who could always choose to return the article again.

“Basically, you are forced to decide if you want90% of the time.Or you can choose to discard it, ”said Nirmal.

Provision is a destination too common for the returns of many of the largest online retailers. In a statement, Amazon told CNBC: “No article is sent to the landfill.We are working to achieve the objective of zero elimination of products and our priority is to resell, donate to beneficial organizations or recycle any product not sold.As a last resort, we will. ”Send elements to energy recovery, but we are working hard to reduce to zero the number of times this happens. ”

"Energy recovery" often means that it burns. In the words of the US Environmental Protection AgencyProcesses, which include combustion, gasification, pyrolization, anaerobic digestion and dump gas recovery ”.

"Honestly, what really struck me were the articles that the computer system tells you to destroy, and the client said he was broken when he arrived and folded, and he wasn't.And it didn't matter what he put in the system, he said destroying the article.And that was something heartbreaking. ”

La eliminación de devoluciones es una práctica generalizada en el comercio electrónico.Las marcas minoristas de lujo como Burberry han sido criticadas en el pasado por quemar millones en mercadería sin vender para proteger sus marcas, una práctica que Burberry le dijo a CNBC que detuvo en 2018. Una estación de televisión danesa informó que H&M quemó 60 toneladas de ropa nueva y sin vender desde 2013, un afirmar que H&M le dijo a CNBC que fue un malentendido.Un portavoz de H&M dijo: “Los productos a los que se refirieron los medios se vieron afectados por el moho o no cumplían con nuestras restricciones químicas”.Afirmaciones similares han afectado a Coach, Urban Outfitters, Michael Kors, Victoria’s Secret y JC Penney.

"It's the easiest to do and sometimes certain brands do it because, you know, they want to protect their brand and do not want lower value articles in the market," said Moore.

Some brands, such as Nike, have found creative ways of recycling returns, making them new value articles.

"Some of the shoes that cannot be sold could end up being crushed and turned into footprints," said Moore. "Energy is needed to grind and turn articles into other items.I think, first of all, if you can sell it in its original form, it is the best scenario for the environment. ”

Amazon has a series of programs aimed at doing precisely that. For certain electronic devices such as devices, phones and video games of Amazon, it offers customers the option to send them to a certified recycler or change them for Amazon gift cards. And since 2019,Its FBA donation program allows sellers to automatically offer eligible surpluses and returns to charity groups through a non -profit network called Good360.amazon says that until now more than 67 million articles have been donated.

Amazon también anunció dos nuevos programas de reubicación el año pasado, luego de que la emisora ​​británica ITV informara que la compañía estaba destruyendo millones de artículos como televisores, computadoras portátiles, drones y secadores de cabello en un almacén del Reino Unido.

First, there is liquidation, which Amazon now offers sellers as an option instead of discarding them.

Amazon and other important retailers are associated with liquidation markets such as Liquidity Services and B-Stock Solutions, which auction the unwanted inventory to the resellers for pallet or even by truck.

"You can recover about 5% of your sale price if your product is settled," said Nirmal. "And at the end of the day, it will end up to someone who, hopefully, can use it.

YouTube creators such as Hope Allen have won followers by finding online offers, and liquidation palettes have become a popular trend. Last year, he paid $ 575 for a Palette of Amazon returns on Liquidation.com that they supposedly were worthAlmost $ 10,000 and unpacked them on their channel, which is called Hopescope.