Hidden cameras and secret trackers reveal where Amazon returns end up
Not a great look for Amazon. Check out the article for an inside peak at some operational challenges and failures of recycling systems, often due to overload from online retail giants. From CBC News:
It’s safe to say that online shoppers like the promise of easy — and even better, free — returns. But it may surprise consumers to learn what can actually happen to all those unwanted items.
A Marketplace investigation into Amazon Canada has found that perfectly good items are being liquidated by the truckload — and even destroyed or sent to landfill. Experts say hundreds of thousands of returns don’t end up back on the e-commerce giant’s website for resale, as customers might think.
Marketplace journalists posing as potential new clients went undercover for a tour at a Toronto e-waste recycling and product destruction facility with hidden cameras. During that meeting, a representative revealed they get “tons and tons of Amazon returns,” and that every week their facility breaks apart and shreds at least one tractor-trailer load of Amazon returns, sometimes even up to three to five truckloads.
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