While the average brick-and-mortar store has a return rate in the single digits, the average rate is somewhere between 15% and 30% for online purchases -- and for clothing, it can be even higher. Last year, U.S. retailers took back more than $100 billion in merchandise sold online. “All of that unwanted stuff piles up. Some of it will be diverted into a global shadow industry of bulk resellers, some of it will be stripped for valuable parts, and some of it will go directly into an incinerator or a landfill,” per The Atlantic.