Sending back something you’ve ordered online has never been easier. Returns are often free for buyers, with some sellers even allowing customers to keep the item and receive a full refund. Amazon has made it easy for their customers to make returns by allowing them to drop them off at Kohl’s or Whole Foods — without ever having to box it up or print a label. There is, however, a darker side to the record number of returns flooding warehouses. Aside from the fact that 10.3% of Amazon returns are fraudulent, about a third of the returned simply end up in landfills. That accounts for nearly 6 billion pounds of landfill waste generated a year and 16 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions. Of course, somebody has to pay for that, and it normally falls back on the third party-seller. With that coming out of their bottom line, prices inevitably go higher. Amazon has received mounting criticism over the destruction of millions of items, and now the e-commerce giant says it’s “working toward a goal of zero product disposal.”
