I've written about Amazon and its shitty work ethics before, and I've been not ordering things from there for years now. But I was totally and utterly flabberghasted and shocked when I heard that Amazon is flat out destroying returned goods. The reason behind this, it seems, is that it's more lucrative for them to not sort returned goods ordered online back into the warehouses, but to just throw them away. Period.

This really floored me. I'm in the lucky situation that I very, very rarely get a return of goods (though you have the right to return stuff bought online, of course, if it does not meet expectations, based on German law), but I'd never have dreamed of throwing things away due to this. Admittedly, my "warehousing setup" is very small and very easy to keep track of... but, well.

It seems that the Big River Store is not the only one throwing away things that are returned - a study by the EHI Retail Institute shows that 55% of the retailers questioned destroy returned goods.

And there goes my happily ordering things online mindset. From now on, I'll always wonder what happens if I return something... and I used to order things in several sizes when I was not sure about which size would fit me.

If you want to read more about this, here's an article about it in German, and here a similar one in English. Also, Greenpeace is running a petition to illegalise the destruction of new and als-new goods.