We’ve all been there: you’re shopping online for a new pair of jeans but don’t know what size will fit you best, so you order three different sizes. Content with your new, well fitted jeans, you send back the other two pairs, and the very idea of what could happen to these clothes doesn't even cross your mind - after all, it’s free returns.
What if I told you these clothes were not, in fact, returned to the shelves, but most likely burned or abandoned in landfill?
Each year, an estimated 5 billion lbs of waste is generated through returns. To put that into perspective, that is the weight of over 11,000 Statues of Liberty. This contributes 15 million metric tonnes of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere through the transportation, decomposition and incineration of the returned clothes.
Clothes that are sent to a landfill will take years to decompose; particularly, synthetic materials, such as polyester, which can take anywhere between 20 and 200 years to break down. Furthermore, the process of decomposition releases methane, a greenhouse gas that for the first 20 years following its release is 84 times more potent than carbon dioxide. Clothes that are incinerated release plastic microfibers into the atmosphere, amidst carbon dioxide and other harmful gases.
Even if you tally up the environmental impact of shipping the item back to the store, repackaging and sending it out again to a new owner, you can quickly see how the returned clothes that are not burned or tossed still have a huge environmental impact. The system fails even when it runs as it should.
Next time you go to order the same skirt in three different sizes, will you think twice before clicking ‘checkout’?
Sophie Farrar
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