What is the environmental impact of returning clothes?

So much so that brands have introduced intentional friction points to reduce the amount of clothes they’re getting back at the warehouse, including returns fees and even deactivating accounts they’re suspicious of buying-to-return. How harmless is buying to return, and what happens to the clothes that we do return?

What happens to clothes that get returned?

Clothes that are returned go straight back onto the marketplace and are resold, right? Sadly, no. Whilst this does happen in some cases, particularly with smaller businesses with high production costs, a lot of brands find it can be cheaper to dispose of returned clothing than preparing them for resale. If that sounds to you like something is wrong with our fashion industry, you wouldn’t be wrong.

It is important to note that most brands aren’t transparent about what happens to their returns. In case you were wondering, we relist all items that are returned to us, after checking them over and giving them a clean, but back to what everyone else is doing.

It has been commonplace for years for brands to incinerate or send returns to landfill.

Some brands have committed to policies that ban disposing of clothing in good condition, but they still send items to recycling facilities instead. For the record, we will never condone the recycling of wearable clothes.

Why would a brand dispose of an item instead of reselling it?

In most cases, people do genuinely try something on, realise it’s not quite right for them and return it. However, in some cases, people wear the clothes and keep the label on before returning (and this is increasingly becoming the case with TikTok and Youtube haul content culture), which means that the clothes that are returned are essentially used. Regardless of whether clothes have been worn or not, the hygienic option for clothes is to ensure that they are cleaned before being returned to market.

However, these cleaning facilities are unlikely to be in the same sorting facilities that send out your items. This means that your returns have to be shipped to another location, which can often be outside of the UK. Once cleaned, these items also need to be repackaged in the correct garment bags and returned to the sorting facility. They also need to be checked over for quality to make sure someone hasn’t returned a faulty item. That is a lot of stages, with a lot of transport and labour involved, which has both a financial and carbon cost just to getting an item back on the market.

Another barrier to reselling is when someone returns an item without the garment bag. Those plastic bags that your online purchases come in aren’t just to keep the clothes protected during transport. They contain important information that helps sorting and fulfilment facilities relist an item. Without those bags, staff can’t accurately sort the item for resale.

The cost of the labour, the time to prepare an item back for resale and the transport can be a huge barrier for businesses and is ultimately why some choose to dispose of instead of selling a returned item.

What if I am genuinely ordering more than one item because of uncertainty around size or colour choice?

These are both points that brands are trying to mitigate by introducing tech AI to help you make a more informed decision when buying. Whilst not a lot of brands have the software yet, over the next decade, you can expect to see more online shops offering digital modelling that will allow you to virtually try clothes on (and predict fit) all from the comfort of your own home. In the meantime, make sure the brightness is turned up on your computer or phone when browsing clothes online, and check size charts. Items from the same brands can sometimes have slightly different size measurements so it is worth checking per style. We also won’t judge your photoshop skills if you want to do a quick mock-up of your head on different colour options. Informed decisions are happy decisions.

There is also a hidden impact of intentionally buying an item to return it. If you buy the same shirt three times, this creates an inflated demand for an item and ultimately perpetuates the cycle of overproduction in the fashion industry.

The more you buy and return, the more problematic your behaviour is. Buying multiples on occasion because you want to be sure of fit or are unsure of colour is normalised behaviour, but we definitely encourage you to always buy less, buy better and buy intentionally. Try to be decisive when buying online and ask yourself whether you will get lots of wear out of an item, rather than impulsively buying something because of ease.

What are my rights with returns?

In the UK, you have a right to return an item bought online within 14 days of purchase if it doesn’t work for you. This is a legal requirement and if a brand says that they don’t offer returns, refer them to the government website. You are eligible for a refund, not just a credit note, and your refund must be issued within 14 days of your item reaching its return destination.

What is the environmental impact of returns?

This is a hard question to approach with a quantifiable answer, but we will give it a go. According to Forbes, Worldwide, approximately 17 billion items are being returned every year. This totals to 4.7 million metric tons of CO2 emitted yearly.

“Couriers typically use heavy polluting vans to come and collect returns. Factoring in the amount that a van can carry at once, and the fact that some vans are more efficient than the larger transits, a single item using a courier emits 181g of CO2, when being returned (Edwards, McKinnon, Cullinane, 2009).”

Basically, there is a significant carbon impact produced by returned clothing due to the transport alone. This then increases/varies depending on whether an item is incinerated, sent to landfill, recycled or resold. If an item is faulty and can’t be resold, upcycling or recycling in the same country is the most environmentally friendly option for it. If an item is in good condition, the best environmental option is for the item to be resold, but this would be improved by businesses keeping transport minimal and reducing the steps between return and resale.

Is it my responsibility to reduce the impact of returns?

It is definitely the responsibility of a brand to create the most sustainable option for returned items. It is also their responsibility to encourage a reduction in the number of returns. That includes accurately describing and presenting items online, assisting customers with size enquiries and offering more carbon-friendly options for returning clothes.

That being said, you can definitely do something as an individual and that includes being mindful about how you shop. As always, the best thing to do is to buy less and buy with intention. Only buy items you intend on wearing for a long time, from businesses that take sustainability seriously and produce items of high quality.

It’s also worth saying, pre-loved is better for the environment than buying new- *cough cough* you might want to check out our pre-loved collections before buying brand new, but we’re not biased or anything. If you’re a little bit guilty of buying with the intention of returning, whether that be to genuinely wear the item for content or out of the house or more innocently because you’ve bought a few items to try on at home and want to see them on before committing, slow your roll.

Try to be more decisive at the buying stage, check the sizing measurements and always ask yourself: do I truly want this? Will I wear this multiple times, for years to come? Is this a necessary purchase?