One of the best parts of online shopping is the returns. No more justifying yourself to a prickly in-store clerk who insists on asking questions despite the store’s no-questions-asked returns policy. Just drop the parcel at the pick-up point and you’re done.
But not so fast. Those returned items aren’t just restocked on warehouse shelves, ready to be resold. In fact, in many cases, they can end up useless. We tend to use generous returns policies as extended trial periods, and we never think of what happens to products after we send them back. So what really happens to the stuff you return?
It Depends
Perhaps unexpectedly, tech products are actually the least likely to end up in a landfill, especially the more expensive ones. But first, let’s take a quick look at what happens to returned goods in general.
To handle returns, a whole shadow industry exists. It’s called “reverse logistics,” and while many large companies handle their own returns, much of the work is contracted out. When a package is returned, it is “triaged,” where people quickly look through everything to see what can be done with it. This means checking that the packaging includes all cables, instruction manuals, power supplies, etc, that clothing is not dirty (according to the Atlantic’s Amanda Mull, these poor folks even sniff the clothing to check for odors), and so on.
Around 70% of returns have nothing wrong with them. That is, they are perfectly functional, and were not sent back because of malfunction. And 20-30% of online purchases are returned, so you can start to imagine the huge amount of processing needed.
We like to think that if we coil the USB cable correctly and fit everything back into the box just so, then our returns will be resold. And that can happen. Electronics retailers often sell returns as “open-box” or “b-stock,” with a full warranty, just like buying new, only with a sometimes hefty discount. But that’s the best-case scenario. Low-price items can end up in the trash, because they are not worth the cost or bother to prep for resale. Clothing might be sold in large consignments to wholesalers and discounters, from where it could end up in dime stores or discount online sellers.
Other items may be donated or recycled, although that also requires a logistics chain to handle, and recycling ends up destroying a lot of raw materials and embodied energy. The worst case is what the industry calls “destroyed,” which usually just means landfill.
In short, you should probably think twice about returning stuff, and treating online retailers as sources for extended trials. As an iFixit reader, it’s likely that you are quite conscious of the need for repair and reuse instead of replacement, but if you’re anything like me, you might not really ever have thought about the huge problem of returns, which was estimated to be a $2 trillion industry in 2022.
But there’s good news too…
Return, Repair, Resell
I asked Chuck Johnston, CSO of Return Pro and staunch Right to Repair advocate, to help me understand how it all works. Return Pro provides return processing services to other companies, and they are experts on what happens to tech products—from home appliances through computers to phones and tablets—after they are returned. I was pretty surprised by the process.
First, the resaleability of a device is in a large part determined by its price. High-price items like iPhones and laptops are worth reselling because even at the lower price of a reconditioned unit, they’re profitable. That, and the high original cost means that there is a consumer demand for a lower-priced alternative.
Chuck says that industry-wide, 70% of returns work just fine. For Return Pro, the “yield rate” is around 90%. That extra 20% comes from repairing returned items so that they can be resold, instead of junking them or sending them for recycling. This means that there is much less e-waste, and of course far fewer resources required to manufacture, package, and ship brand new replacements halfway across the world. Without those repairs, running a company like Return Pro would not be viable. Essentially, the entire return ecosystem is funded by a functional repair system.
Just like any repair shop, they take broken devices and harvest them for parts. But, unlike your local repair shop, they handle so many units that they have a lot more parts to work with. They also have to deal with the same hindrances to repair that we all do, like annoying glue and software locks. Parts pairing is annoying for you and I, but can lead to massive waste if perfectly good parts cannot be reused between units.
Return Pro also buys spares. With TVs, for example, the most common problem is a broken screen. The company ships in replacement panels to repair the returned units before repacking them for sale. When does it make sense to repair a TV? “Unless you’re dealing with a $700-800+ TV, it doesn’t pay to rescreen,” says Chuck. TVs are now a cheap commodity item, and often the cost of repair is higher than the resale value.
Repackaging products for resale is another interesting challenge. While it makes the most sense to use plain brown cardboard boxes that can be used with any model or brand, buyers prefer to have things in the original box, even though they know they are buying reconditioned items. The problem is that the original box is often either damaged or simply missing.
Chuck told me that in some cases their partner actually provides original boxes for them to use, so all the parts and accessories can be packaged up as new, which makes for a much nicer buying experience.
As you dig deeper into the entire supply chain of the devices we buy, from the original manufacturer, through shipping (which is quite carbon-intensive), purchase, use, and returns, it gets more and more obvious that designing for easy repair is utterly essential.
For large companies, the opportunity to reduce costs by making returns less wasteful is a big one. Repairability also saves them money in other ways. Apple’s improvements in this area include making iPhone screen repairs and battery replacements easier, which means that they can be done in-store while the owner waits, instead of shipping them off for days at a time.
Repairability might initially seem like something that makes it easier for handy nerds to keep their computers going for a few more years (itself an essential goal), but it really is important to every part of the modern world.
Taking It Home
Here at iFixit, our in-house team painstakingly refurbishes every returned tool kit. We inspect every part, replace anything that’s missing, and thoughtfully repackage the kits without retail frills, ready to be resold. Properly handling returned goods is an important part of what we do, and makes a real difference, just like repairing your own stuff is essential to sustainability, and to just plain saving money.
It’s tempting to buy and return goods as if online retailers were just facilitators of free trials, but as we see, that’s far from the case. Even if you repackage everything perfectly, carefully coiling cables and taping adapters back into their little plastic baggies, that box is still going to have to be opened and inspected, and likely shipped to yet another location to do that. No, Amazon and the other retail behemoths don’t need your help, but e-waste is e-waste, and in that case, we’re all the losers.
0条评论