Perhaps it was too good a thing to last forever: free online returns. In 2019, nearly 5 billion pounds of waste from online shopping returns went to landfills, and that number almost doubled to 9.5 billion pounds in 2022. Turns out the items you return are often landfilled by the sellers instead of repackaged for sale, because it’s simply easier and cheaper to discard them. Now that free returns are less common, you should carefully consider before buying things online if you’re not completely sure about the purchase. Returning it may put money back into your bank account, but it also could come at an environmental cost.
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