Amazon Returns Issue Solutions Might Include Burning of Product? Other Efforts Made by E-Commerce Giant

Amazon returns are among the main problems that the e-commerce giant experiences.

For the past few years, the American multinational company receiving thousands and millions of items returned by consumers because of some issues.

Back in 2021, Amazon's returned merchandise reached more than a $761 billion valuation. The National Retail Federation's survey revealed this detail.

NRF said that the 2021 value of Amazon returns more than the budget allocated for the national defense of the United States, which is around $741 billion.

Amazon Returns Issue Worsens

According to CNBC's latest report, Amazon is not really providing the exact numbers for its returned products. However, the National Retail Federation was able to provide its estimation.

The retail organization states that e-commerce's consumers returned around 16% of the Amazon holiday sales. This is more than a 50% increase compared to the item return record back in 2020.

On the other hand, Amazon items purchased online have a 21% return chance on average. Now, experts are concerned because the returned merchandise can lead to more carbon emissions once they are delivered to landfills.

But, Amazon said that it has solutions to solve this issue in a greener way as much as possible.

Amazon Returns Solutions

Amazon said that its last resort for the rising item return issue is the so-called energy recovery effort. But, this could still pose additional problems because of how it works.

"Energy recovery means you burn something to produce heat, to produce energy. And you rationalize the disposal of goods as a conversion from one form of matter to another," said Mark Cohen, director of retail studies at Columbia Business School and former CEO of Sears Canada.

Cohen added that if Amazon is doing it, the company will not really reveal the amount of returned items it burned.

Aside from energy recovery, the e-commerce giant added that it is also reselling the returned products, saying that they are offered as quality used items.

You can see this in its Amazon Warehouse, a program that offers pre-owned, used, as well as returned items, in good conditions but at lower prices.

If you want to see further details about the Amazon Warehouse project, you can visit this link.

Meanwhile, the Amazon employee chat app was recently adjusted to ban some words.

On the other hand, the new Amazon Project Kuiper is expected to compete against SpaceX's Starlink program.

For more news updates about Amazon and its upcoming activities, always keep your tabs open here at TechTimes.

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Written by: Griffin Davis