Tuesday, October 26, 2021
The sustainability and finance of Online Shopping and Returns: Who is to blame?
It’s no secret that COVID19 has made pivotal changes to the fashion industry. The ‘Online Fashion Revolution’ was already gaining speed, but with national lockdowns and high street shops shut, people are using internet businesses now more than ever. With everyone staying in rather than going out, the pandemic has severely affected not only what we shop for, but how we shop.
65% of European and US consumers saw a decrease in overall spending on apparel, but spent more online, according to The State of Fashion Report 2020 (ref). By 2024, the revenue from online fashion in the UK is expected to increase to over $35,000 million (ref).
With online shopping becoming the future, online returns have now also become a significant factor in the shopping process.
There have been accusations of companies sending brand new returns from online to landfills. Greenstory, an online Canadian firm specialising on the environmental footprint of businesses, claim that 20% of online returns get sent to landfill because they are unable to be resold (ref).
Optoro, a company specialising in returns logistics, also follows the same narrative. They state that in the US alone each year, £390 million worth of clothes are returned and 5B lbs of waste are sent to landfill. They estimate that only 50% of returned products go back into stock which means that the rest either gets sent to outlet stores or landfills (ref).
The sustainability of returns looks pretty bleak, to say the least.
However, Dr Mark Sumner, Lecturer of Fashion and Sustainability at Leeds University, disagrees with this number of wasted returns.
Due to the small profit margins of fashion brands with low price points, it would not make sense economically to send them to landfills.
“There's lots of myths about the scale of products that go into reduced or doesn't sell”, he said.
The ‘cost of reduced’, which is products selling at a lower price to clear warehouse space, is usually only around 1% for stores. It would cost more to pay for the collection and disposal of products than selling them onto outlet stores. Therefore, stores would not be sending their stock unnecessarily to landfills.
In the wake of environmental media coverage, brands are now held up to a much higher level of accountability. This means that brands are paying closer attention to their ethics in terms of waste in order to maintain their reputation.
Stores such as ASOS, Next and M&S donate their unwanted items to Oxfam and similar charities. ASOS says in their corporate responsibility report that they were taking actions “working towards meeting our target of sending zero waste from our business operations to landfill.” (ref)
Even brands such as Burberry have begun focusing on more sustainable methods of disposal, after they came under fire in 2018 for burning £28 million worth of products. They have since begun to make extra effort in reducing waste, such as donating leftover materials to fashion students. (ref)
This shows that, at least in terms of waste, fashion brands are attempting to make changes and cannot be totally to blame for the unethical practices of online shopping.
Companies are now under increasing pressure from all sides to ‘do the right thing’ but Sumner argues that it is not so simple. Due to the pandemic, brands were criticised for cancelling orders and contracts with overseas suppliers to reduce the production. However, this is an effective way to reduce waste in the industry.
He said: “Consumers and even commentators really do not understand how the industry works and really don’t understand the consequences of these sometimes very flippant, uninformed statements about what the industry should be doing.”
None of this is to say that there is no environmental impact from returning products; CO2 transmissions from transportation, resources used for packaging and relabelling all are reasons which reflect the unsustainability of online shopping and returns.
But are the brands to blame? Sumner suggests that although brands have control over the production of clothing, the item is at the hands of the consumer once it has left the warehouse.
“Consumers have a big part to play in how they manage their own purchases and how they manage their own waste.”
So, what is the solution? It appears that a sustainable system for online shopping would be difficult to achieve. It is about more than eco-friendly packaging and keeping products on the shelf.
“What we need to be thinking about is how do we buy better and how do brands transition from a volume model to something which is more value orientated”, says Sumner. We need to start seeing the value in the clothes that we already own and find an “emotional connection” with them for them to be kept longer.
Fashion companies alone cannot be the only ones told to make a change, but the system itself. No matter what people critique about the industry, the complexity to the issue has been greatly underestimated.
Written by: Imogen Bowlt
Resources:
Dr Mark Sumner: https://ahc.leeds.ac.uk/design/staff/472/dr-mark-sumner
https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/retail/our-insights/state-of-fashion
