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Hi.
Welcome to the show.
I'm Samantha Bee as in Samantha Bee shopping.
Am I right?
Of course, this time of year everybody be shopping.
And more importantly, everybody be returning,
especially when we buy online.
REPORTER: If Santa didn't quite stick to the list this year,
you're not alone.
Americans return nearly $90 billion worth of holiday gifts.
REPORTER: In stores, only around 1 in 10 purchases
is brought back.
But online, that number can jump to 40%.
REPORTER: With online shopping, the rate of returns increases.
REPORTER: The most returned items
are expected to be women's clothing, appliances, and toys.
And sometimes, all three in one,
like these new strap-on vibrator low-rise jeans by dressbarn.
Online shopping surged during the pandemic.
And with holiday sales on track to break records this year,
it isn't slowing down.
But what you may not realize while you're
sipping nog, adding crap to your online cart
that even drunk you knows you're going to send back,
is that unlike that cursed elf boy who returns to haunt me
each year, your online returns don't
always return to the shelves.
REPORTER: In reality, many of these products
never return anywhere.
Instead, they may end up here or even here.
Americans return more than $400 billion
worth of products each year, and more than two million tons
of those items are thrown away, enough to fill
over 200,000 garbage trucks.
That's a number so big it's hard for me
to even visualize, mostly because in Canada we
were taught to measure by Olympic-sized swimming pool.
More than $100 billion of returned merchandise
was from online purchases alone.
And while it goes against everything in my being
to complain about free returns on the thousands of jeans I've
tried on that did not fit, those free returns
we all love actually come at a huge cost to the environment.
It all started with the gift and the curse that
is the Zappos return policy.
REPORTER: Need shoes for your holiday party?
You might want to try on zappos.com that offers
free returns and free shipping.
REPORTER: Zappos.com is famous for its return policy.
Return unworn shoes up to a year after purchase,
and they'll give you free return shipping labels as well.
So it costs you nothing.
Yes, much like in a Quentin Tarantino film,
this story's surprise main character turns out to be feet.
Back in the early 2000s, Americans
were desperate to cover their filthy hooves without actually
going to a store and interacting with another human being
but wary of buying shoes without trying them on
first, so Zappos removed the risk by offering
free return shipping.
Everyone loved it.
Other retailers followed suit, and now customers expect it.
REPORTER: 79% of consumers want free return
shipping, which is now offered by almost half of retailers.
What do you like most about Amazon?
I love the fact that their return is so seamless.
REPORTER: Retailers offering free shipping both ways are
somewhat training shoppers to over-order
and return what doesn't work at the expense of the retailer.
Amazon has conditioned us almost
like Pavlov's dogs to return things and feel
comfortable returning things.
As more companies compete by offering free shipping returns
and generous online discounts to get you to buy even more,
Americans do what we do best, overdo it.
MAN: There's so much of that stuff
coming back from either e-commerce or stores
that you could take all of the units
that we process in one year and build a bridge
from New York to Tokyo.
There's a huge spike in TV sales the week before the Super
Bowl, and there's a huge spike in TV returns the week
after the Super Bowl.
REPORTER: 79% of Americans shop online.
This happens when they're laying in bed,
and they're out having a drink.
Turns out actually one in five of us
shops online while we're using the bathroom.
And what Vox doesn't want you to know
is that the other four shop while they
watch you go to the bathroom.
Clothing and shoes are the biggest
online return categories with as much as 30% to 40% sent back.
That's because many shoppers are bracketing, buying
their usual size plus a size above or below
to try on just in case.
Look, I get it.
Women's clothing sizing is a cluster [BLEEP],,
and you got to do what you got to do.
But if you can avoid buying to just return,
you should because most returned products don't go back on sale.
Instead, they wind up in retail purgatory.
REPORTER: The reality is it often ends up
in a place of limbo, a place that some retailers
call the wall of shame.
REPORTER: Welcome to the land of buyer's remorse, towers of
toys, mountains of merchandise.
This Texas warehouse is the size of two football fields.
Ironically, two football fields were also returned.
When these returns are processed,
some get sold in bulk at a fraction of their original cost
to liquidators who open full-on rummage sale stores where
you can sift through bins of random products
at dirt cheap prices.
Your returns could also wind up at discount retailers
or secondary markets overseas, where they may
or may not actually be resold.
But for many big companies, it's cheaper to just throw
them straight in the trash.
They did a--
probably some kind of cost-value analysis
of that and found that, you know what?
This is going to cost us more to try to sell it again
than just to toss it in the trash.
We have spoken to over 120 retailers, and over half
of them have said that they are disposing of over 25%
of their customer returns.
Every year, 4 billion pounds of returned clothing
ends up in the landfill.
That's like every resident in the US did a load of laundry
last night and decided to throw it in the trash today.
Honestly, with the way some of you dorks dressed,
that wouldn't be such a bad idea.
Nearly 5 billion pounds of retail returns
will end up in landfills, and that has a staggering impact
on the environment.
Landfill waste from returns alone
contributes 15 million metric tons of carbon dioxide
to the atmosphere, and all the extra transportation
for returns is also a massive energy waster.
It's almost as bad as all the energy Santa wastes every year
taking the long way around to avoid
his ex-lovers and illegitimate children.
The real miracle on 34th Street?
Santa has never had to pay child support
no matter how many letters they pour on that judge's desk.
But there are things we can do to make
online shopping less wasteful and more
environmentally friendly.
The US has no federal regulations
on how unsold and return products should be handled,
but we could.
Last year, France passed wide-ranging antiwaste
legislation that outlawed the destruction
of unsold or returned items, including electronics,
clothing, and cosmetics.
We should follow France's lead on that
and on taking extra long lunches to drink
entire bottles of wine.
Experts say retailers should also look for new solutions
to resell, recycle, or donate their returns.
They could also minimize their packaging
and offer clearer descriptions of products
online so customers know exactly what they're getting.
Some companies like IKEA now even
offer virtual reality to help customers envision
their products in their homes.
So now you can order that mom dresser with 100% confidence
that it'll fit.
There are also things we can all do
to reduce waste from returns, especially this holiday season.
For one, stop being such shitty gift givers.
We waste billions of each year on gifts people [BLEEP] hate.
Around the holidays, an estimated 2/3 of people who get
presents return at least one of them.
And according to one survey, the most unliked gifts
are clothes, unless you're the Son of God, in which case
the most unliked gift is myrrh.
Seriously, wise men, what's baby Jesus going
to do with all that myrrh?
Get the kid a stuffed animal or an action figure of himself
or even a t-shirt that says, "I survived a virgin birth,
and all I got was this T-shirt."
And the fact that no one wants our terrible gifts
is especially depressing when you consider that last year,
about a third of all consumers took on debt
to pay for holiday expenses.
The only holiday debt anyone should
have to worry about is the emotional debt
your family owes you for all those years
of simply being themselves.
So this holiday season, please consider buying less
or just asking people what they actually want.
You can also give gift cards or experiences
to help your family and friends avoid unwanted stuff.
And on December 26, when you're trying to figure out
what to do with all that crap with dalmatians on it
because you owned a dalmatian 15 years ago,
consider posting that dog shit on Buy Nothing
and Freecycle groups to find a better home for it.
You know what they say.
One woman's trash is another dalmatian fetishist's treasure.
Happy holidays, creep.
We'll be right back.
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