Why sustainable returns matter to customers and what to do

As climate change becomes a growing concern, the majority of consumers are focused on finding ways to limit their carbon impact to create a sustainable future.

In the UK, 77% of Britons are concerned about climate change, and 72% of Australians share the same attitude. Consumers are moving towards more sustainable solutions within their daily lives, including recycling and/or composting products; repairing items, buying second-hand, or buying long-lasting items; and choosing brands based on ethical considerations.

As an ecommerce brand, it’s critical to weave sustainability into your mission and values. By prioritising environmental concerns, you’ll be able to do your part to offset carbon emissions, and set your brand up for success with customers who care about the earth’s future.

Returns’ sustainability problem

While many brands are now making efforts to minimise their use of single-use plastics in packaging, and choosing more carbon-friendly transportation options, one area where brands often fall flat on meeting sustainable goals is in managing their reverse logistics.

In fact, customers return up to 30% of online purchases, resulting in 24 million metric tonnes of CO2 emissions. As a result, more than 9.5 billion pounds of returned products are sent straight to landfills, as they can’t be resold.

But by developing a post-purchase sustainability strategy, retailers can move away from wasteful return practises and develop thoughtful initiatives that help them reduce their carbon footprint and promote a more circular economy.

Strategies for post-purchase sustainability

To reduce your brand’s carbon footprint in the returns process, it’s important to set up a comprehensive plan for how to sustainably dispose of or repurpose your customers’ unwanted goods.

Here are some ways to get started:

• Offer returnless refunds
  If your customer has purchased an item that’s not likely to be resold, or the cost of reshipping and restocking the item is higher than your resale margin, it’s not economically practical to ask them to ship the item back to your warehouse. Consider offering a “returnless refund” on these items, in which you’ll provide the customer with a full refund without requesting the item back. Using a returns management solution like Loop, you can set up conditions that must be met for a returnless refund, and automate the process accordingly, eliminating carbon emissions on these returns and encouraging customers to pass on their unwanted items to friends or family.
• Consolidate returned products in bulk
  By encouraging customers to drop off their returns at a drop off centre through our partner, Happy Returns, you’ll be able to consolidate multiple product returns into one bulk shipment, saving money on reverse shipping whilst diminishing carbon emissions. This solution also eliminates the need for wasteful packaging: Customers don’t need to box up their returns, and Happy Returns ships the bulk delivery back in reusable packaging.
• Build partnerships with donation centres
  Some returned products may not be in resellable condition—but they may be perfect candidates for community organisations that are in need of gently-used merchandise for their programmes. By partnering with local donation centres, retailers can ensure that these products are put to good use and don’t end up in landfills. Brooklinen, for instance, partners with Good365, an organisation that distributes returned linens and other products to their network of 100,000+ nonprofits, including women’s shelters, homeless shelters, and other valuable community resources.
• Implement a recycling programme
  By providing clear instructions on how to recycle your products, you’ll be likely to drive more consumer action. Also, consider setting up incentives for customers who gather and send back unwanted products: many clothing brands offer store credit towards a new item for bringing back worn merchandise for recycling, rather than disposing of it. Some brands, like The North Face, go a step further, encouraging their shoppers to bring in a bag of unwanted clothes and shoes from any brand to receive a $10 discount on their merchandise.
• Create a circular economy for your used products
  Many customers end up returning gently used items that aren’t eligible for resale in your store—but don’t send them to landfill. By partnering with a reselling platform, such as Arrive or Recurate, you’ll be able to build a branded second hand platform for these returned products. Through this partnership, you can expose your brand’s merchandise to more customers at a lower price point; give your used products a second life; and build a new line of revenue for your business.
• Charge for product returns
  While shoppers understandably love free returns, they often take advantage of generous policies to participate in bracketing, or purchasing multiple items with the aim of only keeping one. By charging a fee for product returns, you’ll be able to limit the impact of bracketing on your brand. This initiative will both improve your profit margins and reduce your brand’s carbon emissions, ensuring that more customers will only purchase items they genuinely intend to keep

Use returns management to optimise for sustainability

By utilising a best-in-class returns management solution like Loop, you can streamline your reverse logistics operations and optimise for sustainability at every touchpoint.

Loop enables you to set up and manage a generous, sustainability-first, returns policy that you can seamlessly execute. Your shoppers can use a self-service returns portal to request a return, which you can use to automatically determine the most environmentally-friendly and cost-effective way to dispose of the product, based on the item type and condition. With Loop’s seamless automated workflows, you’ll be able to extend your products’ life cycles while minimising your products’ environmental impact.

By putting sustainability first throughout your business operations, you’ll be able to build a core of loyal customers who’ll commit their dollars towards brands like yours who share their values. That will help you create a brand that’s built to last.

Find out how Loop can help you minimise the environmental impact of your returns.

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