Fashion brands love to highlight their progress in sustainability. From recycled polyester and organic cotton to water-efficient denim and ethically sourced fabrics, sustainability initiatives are front and center in marketing campaigns. Companies like Gap Inc. and Marks & Spencer have indeed made visible strides toward greener operations.
But there’s a glaring blind spot in most sustainability reports: returns.
The Hidden Cost of Returns
Behind every “eco-friendly” fashion collection lies an often-overlooked cycle—products going from warehouse to customer and back again. In fashion e-commerce, average return rates hover around 30–40% (Shopify). That means 3 to 4 out of every 10 items are sent back, most often due to poor fit.
These returns come with massive hidden environmental costs:
Yet, these impacts are rarely mentioned in sustainability reports, even though they directly undermine circularity claims.
The Financial Toll of Ignoring Returns
Returns don’t just harm the planet—they erode profitability. According to PYMNTS.com, for every $1 billion in sales, the average retailer incurs $165 million in returns. AfterShip data shows returns represent a $218 billion per year problem for apparel alone.
The cost of processing each return can range from 20% to 65% of the item’s original value, depending on shipping, restocking, and resale potential. Worse still:
52% of fashion e-commerce orders are returned primarily due to poor fit
25% of returned items never make it back to stock and go directly to landfills or liquidation
Despite these staggering numbers, most sustainability reports highlight recycled fabrics and carbon offsets while ignoring the operational waste created by returns.
Customers Notice the Gap
Consumers are becoming more critical of how brands communicate sustainability. They are quick to notice the irony when companies launch “sustainable” collections while charging return fees to reduce volume—without addressing the root cause of returns.
Sustainability isn’t just about materials. It’s about the entire product journey—forecasting, selling, sizing, and servicing clothing in a way that minimizes waste. Until brands recognize this in their sustainability reports, claims of circularity will ring hollow.
The Core Issue: Fit
The reality is simple: most returns happen because of poor fit. Unless the fashion industry tackles sizing and fit at scale, even the most ambitious sustainability initiatives will remain incomplete.
Forward-thinking brands are starting to see this. Investing in accurate size recommendation tools and improving fit communication are not just operational upgrades—they are sustainability actions. By preventing unnecessary returns, brands can reduce emissions, save costs, and strengthen customer trust.
Practical Solutions: Turning Fit Into Sustainability Progress
So how can fashion brands bridge the gap between ambitious goals and reality in their sustainability reports? Here are a few practical steps:
- Integrate size recommendation engine
- Adopt solutions like our SizeSense.ai, which uses data-driven fit insights to guide customers to the right size. This reduces return rates at scale while improving confidence in online shopping.
- Educate customers about the impact of returns, and incentivise them to use the recommendation engine
- It takes time to build that trust, but once there, returns will go down as customers always get the right size, and no longer want or need to bracket their orders.
- Leverage product and customer data to inform your production forecasting
- Either through SizeSense, or other tools, make sure you know your customers and don’t overproduce sizes that will not be used. Base your designs on what your customers actually need.
By embedding these solutions into operations and reporting, brands can ensure that their sustainability reports reflect a complete picture of impact, not just the good news.
Final Thoughts
For fashion brands, the future of sustainability reporting must evolve. Highlighting recycled materials is not enough if millions of garments are being shipped back and forth due to poor fit. The next generation of sustainability reports should account for the full impact of returns, because only then can fashion make credible progress toward true circularity.
Until fit is fixed, sustainability will remain an unfinished promise. And if you son’t want to contribute to the this hidden toll, as a brand – install SizeSense from the Shopify App Store, or as a customer – build loyalty towards the brand who actually try to solve the issue, and do’t just use their sustainability reports for marketing purpose, without real substance behind them.