Do you ever order clothes online in different sizes and colors, just to try them on and then send back what doesn't work? Aparna Mehta used to do this all time, until she one day asked herself: Where do all these returned clothes go? In an eye-opening talk, she reveals the unseen world of "free" online returns — which, instead of ending up back on the shelf, are sent to landfills by the billions of pounds each year — and shares a plan to help put an end to this growing environmental catastrophe.
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Why wont they donate instead of throwing it away.
+John Hillman And the food industry. I am 100% with you on that. Ignorance is one thing. But trying to help and ignore that you harm is a whole new level of bullshit. I cannot stand these ads anymore, with all the moral preaching and pity arousing, while the ultimate consequence a lot of the time is more poverty.
High fashion doesn’t want needy people repping their brands.
I don’t know about the US, but here in Germany companies have to pay tax on the items they donate, which makes it more expensive than throwing everything away
+Shen Storm +Shen Storm But they could easily donate that food to soup kitchens and stuff. A fair amount of them would even collect it.
+WeirdestWolf The problem almost always comes down to concerns about money (which is so often the case) and effort.
What’s easier and cheaper, throwing stuff in the garbage or having and maintaining space and inventory for items you’re giving away for free?
Think about it, donating all of the unwanted items (food, clothing, etc.), especially on a large scale, requires that you have a (or multiple) warehouse/storage facilities/designated spaces for all the product. You also have to pay somebody to figure out the logistics and oversee the effort. Not only that, but you have to pay someone to sort, audit, and probably pack all of these items too… Or, you could just throw it in the trash.
On top of all that, you’ve now, as a business, undercut your own market (and maybe even value) by just giving the stuff away. All those people who would otherwise have had to scrimp and save to buy your product, all of a sudden don’t have to, which impacts your sales.
So, in the end, you’re not only paying to give stuff away for free, you’re also losing money from lost sales.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t think anything should go to waste, especially when there are so many people who go without, this (and probably other reasons) is why the majority don’t.
Go to the store, find the right clothing, buy it. So much simpler.
I’d rather wear clothes that don’t fit forever more than venture into a real life store 🙂
Here’s my theory, based on living with, and understanding women…
Women buy these clothes, with the intention to wear them temporarily, usually for some function, or exotic trip abroad where they can take pics of themselves, and post it on social media. Then they return them after they have served their purpose. Remember, females don’t want to be caught wearing the same thing twice in any picture.
And why they don’t go to the stores to buy and return, is because they have to face the retail attendant and come up with some crafty little lie about why they are returning it, and be challenged when asked if they had “used” the item. They prefer to avoid this line of direct questioning, and thus buy online and avoid the scrutiny.
Yes, it’s so simple. If you have the typical height and body shape. If you don’t, however, sometimes you actually need to order clothes online, in the faint hope that something, somewhere, might fit ok.
You might not be aware of this, but buying clothes or undergarments for specific figures is massively more expensive in a physical store compared to online.
The Flaneur some very strange idea of women you seem to have. I don’t know what kind of women you have had experience with, but they are by no means typical.
+Paz R << Claims authority over what is deemed "typical", as though there is consistency everywhere based on his/her own environment. Labels anything outside his/her scope of imagination as "strange", hoping to disqualify it entirely. These people are PC zealots who control free speech and independent thinking. I even took the courtesy to claim my own comment as a theory, but these people STILL get triggered.
>.< what would solve the issue is "suck it up". You bought it, it doesn't fit you ... tough. No refunds, no returns - all sales final. There, problem solved.
keeperofthegood then people would stop online shopping. Companies would be silly to implement this rule, as they’d be out of a job.
I dont buy clothes online so i’ve no problem
They usually try to resell it as new.
wow.. cloths have to be super extremely overpriced, if they are making profit even with throwing away all those returns
blabla62871 economies of scale
Yep, especially with name brands clothes. Here’s a breakdown: material and labor cost = 5%, shipping and handling = 5%, marketing and advertisement = 20%, 70% = profit.
Women are dumb and won’t stop paying premium just to compete against other women, just to look good, and compete for status. Thus clothing remains overpriced. Men usually buy what is cheap and pragmatic, and will wear their socks and underwear until the holes are too big.
The Flaneur why do you hate women? I’ve seen a few of your comments on here and they all seem to have negative things to say about women, when actually the video is about online returns?
+Paz R Returns of CLOTHING. Females are the largest consumers of clothing, by a wide margin. If we were talking about returning electronics it would be a different story.
I actually hate politically correct people who get triggered.
Cringeworthy Virtue signaling
I’ve returned maybe 12 times in my whole life. Almost all because of a defect. I don’t get it. I buy clothing and shoes online. I find the sizing info, read reviews and make a informed decision what size to buy. Works for me!
12 seems quite high to me. I would say that perhaps I have returned 2 or 3 items in my life. Not that it’s a competition 🙂
+Dave C You can’t compare if you don’t know many items both of you have ordered in your respective lives.
+Stanislas Villard True. I’m quite stingy so don’t buy many thinks relatively speaking
Consume less that’s the answer to all our problems
Not all of them, a lot of them, yeah, but not all.
Stop shopping so much. This is just another bandaid on a bigger problem; the overproduction of crap we don’t really need. Where does it all eventually end up? Can you imagine how much trash humans have generated since consumerism became the wheels of the economy? #Minimalism
What a bizzare angle- This is about helping corporations stay richer, not landfills- While you say these rich corps throw away good clothing; 3 billion suffering people need or could use some extra cloths! This TED talk topic does not add up unless we add the Benjamin’s lining the tycoons walls and ceilings-
I find it hard to believe that this lady created this talk for selfish/business reasons but maybe I’m naive
This is overwhelmingly a female problem.
It is they who are the buyers-and-returners.
They are the ones who are bad for the environment.
The Flaneur again with the misogyny
I assume the 3 billion people you referenced are the citizens of Earth’s least developed nations.
On that topic, sending our surplus clothing overseas is a terrible idea. By flooding foreign markets with free clothing, we decimate the economic prospects of indigenous clothing producers. Third world entrepreneurs can’t grow their own companies when outside donations have already met local demand, and massive sectors of poor economies remain underdeveloped as a result. The final consequence is more poverty, not less.
Impoverished foreigners are capable of taking care of themselves, and they’d be doing a better job of it if we stopped encouraging them to depend on western surplus. If you want to lend aid, then sponsor a business or build a school. Help them help themselves.
+Paz R Again with being triggered. Again with denying the role gender plays in this phenomenon. Have you not stepped into a mall and realized that some 80% of retail space is devoted to female-centric shopping habits? You STILL want to deny reality?
Have you ever notice how men will wear clothing until it’s completely worn out, unlike females who have much larger wardrobes, and cannot be seen wearing the same clothes too often, especially in pictures? Have you ever grown up around 4 sisters, and worked in female-dominated workplaces? Have you?
I’m sorry but if I buy something online I expect delivery from the retailer, not returns from the original purchaser!!
If the discount is a lot I would buy it
Then have fun paying full price.
Her idea is literally just eBay
No
Yep. Or Etsy. Or LetGo. Or Craigslist.
What’s to stop people from doing it more often just for the incentives
It’s hard to believe returned goods are dumped.
Another solution is providing right specs and details for a product.
In some parts of the world there is war, hunger, famine.
In some parts there is waste.
What a strange world.
“Every soul will taste death. And We test you with evil and with good as trial; and to Us you will be returned. (The Noble Qur’an. Surah Al-Anbya. Verse:35)”
Why is the end consumer the only problem? Should the company receiving the return be held accountable to sell it again if nothing is wrong with it? I don’t even see the economics of throwing it away.
It’s the businesses fault. They are throwing the cloths in the landfill. They could donate them. They could ship them overseas to poorer countries to donate them. The businesses realized they could make more money doing something now WE have to do more work to deal with the consequences of their decision? Maybe the businesses should use the extra profit they are making to you know, deal with the consequences of their decisions. Wouldn’t this be a novel idea? Or maybe the businesses should go back to charging people for shipping if it’s actually not profitable to give free shipping. No, lets create a whole infrastructure to sell the cloths to each other instead of the businesses dealing with the mess they made. lol. To each their own I guess. I’d never buy used cloths through this type of thing but maybe others would.