The latest fashion trend in Britain seems to be brands asking customers to return items. While that’s bad for the consumer’s wallet, it likely has a positive impact on the environment. Free returns come with environmental costs, namely more pollution and waste.
H&M is the latest brand to charge return fees in Britain, the BBC reported today. It joins Zara, Uniqlo and several other clothing brands that are cutting their own costs by eliminating free returns. The parent company that owns Zara, Inditex and H&M make up the two largest clothing retailers in the world. If this policy begins to gain traction outside Britain, it could make a significant dent in the fashion industry’s carbon footprint.
Before you buy something, it has probably traveled a long way by sea, by air, by truck – maybe even all three. That journey produces planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions and local air pollution (particularly for low-income communities of color near warehouses). Returning the product extends the journey, causing even more pollution. And chances are the final destination will be a landfill, because it may be cheaper for a company to throw away the unwanted item rather than resell it.
The popularity of online shopping with free returns has prompted people to use their homes as a dressing room. It’s easy to buy a product online, try it on at home, and then return an unsatisfactory item. And that has taken an increasing toll on the environment. In the US, CO2 emissions from transporting returned goods increased from 15 to 24 million tons of CO2 between 2019 and 2022. That is approximately equivalent to the climate pollution caused by more than 5.3 million gas-guzzling cars last year.
About half of online purchases are returned, The guard reports. But that doesn’t mean the items will end up back on the shelves; half of the returned products are offered for sale again in the US. According to one estimate, nearly 10 billion pounds of returned goods ended up in U.S. landfills last year.
Discouraging returns is one way companies can reduce that waste and their greenhouse gas emissions. They can also provide consumers with more accurate and detailed information about the products they market online. That could potentially prevent some returns by giving customers a better idea of what they’ll get in real life once a package arrives at their door.