Amazon aims to help SMBs keep returns out of landfills

Amazon last week launched two new programs that it predicts will keep 300 million products in use each year, furthering its circular economy goals. Small companies will be able to resell returned goods as used on Amazon, and they can offload the handling of returns and overstock merchandise to Amazon and its partners, through the new Fulfillment by Amazon Liquidations and Grade and Resell options.

While online commerce has boomed during the COVID-19 pandemic, the retail colossus has come under fire for destroying mountains of new products including laptops, iPads, TVs and face masks instead of reselling, recycling or otherwise keeping them in circulation. Exposés last year by iTV News in the U.K. and later the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation outraged consumers and sustainability advocates, leading Amazon to pledge it would work toward “zero product disposal.”

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