#retail-returns

#retail-returns

Americans are likely to have spent a record $1 trillion-plus this holiday shopping season alone, and about $5.5 trillion in retail sales in all of 2025, according to estimates by the National Retail Federation. That includes many unhappy returns for retailers: And when it comes back to them, a lot of the $850 billion in returned merchandise is often cheaper to discard than to inspect, sort, and resell-adding millions of tons to landfills every year.

"In reality, most are never restocked because brands don't have the infrastructure to process them in a cost-effective way," Emily Hosie, founder and CEO of open-box marketplace REBEL, told Axios. That contributes to an estimated 8.4 billion pounds of returned goods ending up in landfills each year, Hosie said.