Here’s your ONE drop:
Online shopping has trained us to shop like idiots. Order five things. Keep one. Send the rest back. No guilt, because the system was built to feel frictionless. (Guilty as hell of this, by the way).
In stores, return rates are single digits. Online, anywhere from 15–50%.
Why?
Because online shopping isn’t designed for good decisions. It’s designed for fast clicks. Add to cart. Try later. Decide when it arrives. This used to be weird. Now it’s just… Wednesday.
One returns facility outside New York processes 100,000 packages a day. (100,000 x 365 is not a small problem).
Each item gets opened by a real human. Inspected. Sniffed. Repacked. Or trashed. Yes, sniffed. To check if you wore it.
The most common thing found in returned pants? Someone else’s underwear.
There’s no AI for that. Just noses, eyes, and minimum wage.
Best case: it goes to an outlet store.
Mid case: landfilled.
Worst case: dumped in Ghana on top of a clothing trash mountain.
The easier it gets to buy, the harder it gets to care.
Worth thinking about.
// Ann