'The planet pays': An underrated cost of holiday gift returns

[mahatmakanejeeves]

There was a segment about this on the network TV news last night too.

Yahoo Finance

'The planet pays': An underrated cost of holiday gift returns

Grace O'Donnell · Assistant Editor
Wed, December 29, 2021, 9:58 AM

With the season of giving comes the season of returning.

A report by Optoro and CBRE forecasted that 30% or $66.7 billion worth of products will be returned this holiday season, a figure that has been on the rise for the past five years, driven largely by e-commerce growth.

The record amount of anticipated returns could create unwanted effects: The influx of additional items may inflame already strained supply chains and lead to greater impacts on the environment.

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“We're all paying for it,” Optoro President and Co-Founder Adam Vitarello said about gift returns on Yahoo Finance Live (video above). “The cost gets passed on to retailers, over $20 per return. And so they pass that along to consumers. And we all pay for having an inefficient returns process.”

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[Sherman A1]

1. I had read about this a year or so ago

and it is certainly a whole lot of stuff. Myself, I return very little. If the item is damaged or defective it goes back, but I am very circumspect about what I order online or buy in stores. It doesn't always get used right away (I am currently working with some hobby items that I purchased last April for example) but it does get used.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

2. I buy a lot at thrift stores. "You buy it; it's yours." Makes things easy. NT