If you've ever purchased clothing online, you know how difficult it can be to find something that fits right. So you receive it, try it on, and return it for a different size. Or maybe you order three different sizes and return the two that don't fit. You might be surprised to learn that the ones you return may be sent straight to a landfill. This sounds awfully wasteful, and it is, but it's a matter of economics.
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.
Learn about the waste that comes with online retail and what you can do about it at CBC. -via Damn Interesting
(Image credit: Peter Griffin)
