CBC News in Canada hid GPS trackers in immaculate-condition Amazon returns to see what happened to them. Welcome to the landfill.
Many returns took a circuitous route, often covering several hundreds — sometimes even thousands — of kilometres to reach their final destination. Marketplace returned toy blocks that travelled over 950 kilometres before reaching a new customer in Quebec. And a printer clocked over 1,000 kilometres while circling around southern Ontario.
Of the 12 items returned, it appears only four were resold by Amazon to new customers at the time this story was published. Months on from the investigation, some returns were still in Amazon warehouses or in transit, while a few travelled to some unexpected destinations, including a backpack that Amazon sent to landfill.
The backpack that Marketplace returned in brand-new condition — but with a tracker inside — can be traced directly from the Amazon warehouse in Mississauga, Ont., to a waste management facility in Toronto.
I tend to buy stuff from "Amazon Warehouse", which are obviously returns that made it through whatever arcane or slapdash process of inspection results in all this. I bet it works by category: return a laptop, it will get a good look over and returned to the shelf. Return a bag or a pair of jeans, in the trash it goes.