How Loop helps your brand provide sustainable returns
Kelli Trapnell
·April 10, 2023
With Loop, it is easy being green. We care about the environment, and we know the toll that returns can take on the earth. That’s why we built sustainability into our returns options. With sustainable shipping, resale options, and carbon offset apps, you can make sure that your ecommerce returns are as eco-friendly as possible.
More than ever, the average shopper cares about sustainability. In fact, 56% of shoppers care about the environmental impact of returns. Almost 3 in 4 shoppers regularly review a retailer’s return policy for sustainable practices. And a vast majority of shoppers say that they’re more likely to keep shopping with a brand that offers eco-friendly returns options than with one that doesn’t. Without a smart plan in place, though, staying sustainable as an ecommerce company can be tough.
Learn more about how Loop makes returns sustainable here.
In this blog, we’ll discuss how Loop offers sustainable options like:
- Sustainable shipping
- Resale options
- Carbon offsets
Sustainable shipping
First on the list of our priorities is offering sustainable shipping for returns. Even in the best of circumstances, the act of shipping itself has one of the biggest carbon footprints when it comes to returns. However, it’s just not realistic to expect that shipping will cease to be a part of returns and exchanges, especially with the growth of ecommerce as a whole.
That’s why, at Loop, we help our merchants offer sustainable shipping solutions to our merchants. We offer consolidated, in-bulk shipping options. The gasoline and human labor involved in one large shipment is significantly lower than that involved in shipping many smaller, separate packages. Using our Keep Item function, we also allow merchants to let their customers simply keep items that wouldn’t be worth the trip back to your warehouse. We also encourage shoppers to re-use their original packaging for their return, keeping landfill waste down. Not only do all of these offerings keep our merchants’ shipping more sustainable, they also save our merchants money: to the tune of $4.8M last year alone.
Learn more about how shipping plays a key role in your returns process in the Future of Reverse Logistics
Resale options
Offering your shoppers convenient resale options keeps unsellable, returned products from winding up in landfills. NPR reported that around 6 billion tons of US returns alone end up in landfills every year. Resale options help whittle that number down, especially for products which our merchants can’t put back on the proverbial shelf for the next shopper.
Loop integrates with best-in-class recommerce platform Arrive, which allows for resale of unwanted or returned items. Not only can resale significantly reduce landfill waste and cut back on your brand’s carbon footprint, it can also provide you with another income stream for returns.
Carbon offsets
No matter which methods you employ to improve your returns’ sustainability, you’ll need to keep an eye on their larger implications if you want to get serious about going green. That’s where our partnership with EcoCart comes in.
With a carbon offset app like EcoCart, not only can you track the impact that each order you send out (and each return that comes back to you) has on the planet, you can also help communicate which shipping options are less environmentally harmful to your shoppers. By empowering your shoppers to select sustainable shipping options for themselves, you’ll be ensuring that your returns are less harmful to the environment on the whole.
Get more sustainable returns by automating your returns through Loop. Book a demo today to learn how Loop can help your brand’s returns become more eco-friendly.
In this article
Stay in the loop
Subscribe for product updates and Loop's biweekly newsletter.
Retain more revenue with Loop today
With Loop, your brand can offer everything from refunds to direct exchanges to shopper incentives and more. Even better? These exchanges build your business.