The holiday season will soon come to a close, but the busiest time of the year for product returns is just beginning.
The National Retail Federation estimates 17% of holiday purchases will be sent back this year. More retailers are reporting extended return windows and increased holiday staff to handle the rush this year.
A major driver for returns is uncertainty. When we buy for other people, finding what they want is a bit of a guessing game. Online purchases have higher return rates because finding the right size and color is tough when you're just staring at images on screens.
“Clothing and footwear, as you can imagine, because fit is such an important criteria, they have higher rates of returns,” said Saskia van Gendt, chief sustainability officer at Blue Yonder, which sells software designed to improve companies' supply chain management.
Returns come with an environmental cost, but there's a lot consumers and companies are doing to minimize it.
If a company sells a thing, it's probably packaged in plastic. Plastic is made from oil, and oil production releases emissions that warm the planet. If that thing is bought online, it's put on a plane or a train or a truck that usually uses oil-based fuel.
If you buy a thing and return it, it goes through most or all of that all over again.
And once those products are back with the retailer, they may be sent along to a refurbisher, liquidator, recycler or landfill. All these steps require more travel, packaging and energy, ultimately translating to more emissions. Joseph Sarkis, who teaches supply chain management at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, estimates that returning an item increases its impact on the planet by 25% to 30%.
Roughly a third of the time, those returns don't make their way to another consumer. Because frequently, it's not worth reselling.
If, for example, you get a phone, but you send it back because you don't like the color, the seller has to pay for the fuel and equipment to get the phone back, and then has to pay for the labor to assess whether it has been damaged since leaving the facility.
“It can be quite expensive,” said Sarkis. “And if you send it out to a new customer and the phone is bad, imagine the reputational hit you’ll get. You’ll get another return and you’ll lose a customer who’s unhappy with the product or material. So the companies are hesitant to take that chance.”
Something as expensive as a phone might get sold to a secondary or refurbishment market. But that $6 silicone spatula you got off Amazon? Probably not worth it. Plus, some stuff — think a bathing suit or a bra — is less attractive to customers if there's a chance it's been resold. The companies know that.
And that's where the costs of returns are more than just environmental — and consumers wind up paying. Even free returns aren't really free.
“Refurbishment, inspection, repackaging, all of these things get factored into the retail price,” said Christopher Faires, assistant professor of logistics and supply chain management at Georgia Southern University.
If you want to reduce the impact of your returns, the first move is to increase their chances of resale. Be careful not to damage it, and reuse the packaging to send it back, said Cardiff University logistics and operations management lecturer Danni Zhang.
If you have to return something, do it quickly. That ugly Christmas sweater you got at the white elephant office party has a much better chance of selling on Dec. 20 than it does on Jan. 5. Zhang said it's not worth the cost to the company to store that sweater once it's gone out of season.
Another tip: in-person shopping is better than online because purchases get returned less often, and in-person returns are better, too — because those items get resold more often. Zhang said it reduces landfill waste. Sarkis said it reduces emissions because companies with brick-and-mortar locations spread out across the country and closer to consumers thus move restocked goods shorter distances.
“If I can return in-store, then I definitely will," Zhang said. “The managers can put that stuff back to the market as soon as possible.”
Obviously the best thing consumers can do is minimize returns. Many shoppers engage in “bracketing behavior,” or buying multiple sizes of the same item, keeping what fits, and returning the rest.
“This behavior of bringing the dressing room to our homes is not sustainable,” said Faires.
If you're buying for someone else, you can also consider taking the guesswork out of the equation and going for a gift card.
“I know we do really want to pick up something really nice to express our love for our friends or our family. But if we are more sustainable, probably the gift card will be much better than just purchasing the product,” Zhang said.
Sarkis wants to see companies provide more information in product descriptions about the environmental impact of returning an item, or how much of the purchase price factors in return costs.
“But I don’t know if they want to send a negative message," he said. “If you're telling someone to stop something because of negative results, that's not going to sell.”
Sarkis and Zhang both say charging for returns would help. Already Amazon is requiring customers pay in certain situations.
On the tech side, Blue Yonder’s recent acquisition of Optoro, a company that provides a return management system for retailers and brands, uses a software to quickly assess the condition of returned products and route them to stores that are most likely to resell them.
“Having that process be more digitized, you can quickly assess the condition and put it back into inventory,” said van Gendt. “So that’s a big way to just avoid landfill and also all of the carbon emissions that are associated with that.”
Clothing is returned most often. Many sizes do not reflect specific measurements, like women's dresses, so they vary a lot between brands. Zhang said better sizing could help reduce the need for returns. On top of that, Sarkis said more 3D imaging and virtual reality programs could help customers be more accurate with their purchases, saving some returns.
The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.
FILE - Shoppers wait in line to enter Macy's flagship store on Nov. 28, 2025 in New York. (AP Photo/Angelina Katsanis, File)
FILE - A person carries a shopping bag in Philadelphia, Dec. 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File)
Gulf countries reported new attacks Sunday morning, a day after Iran called for the evacuation of three major ports in the United Arab Emirates, threatening for the first time a neighboring country’s non-U.S. assets.
Tehran accused the United States of using “ports, docks and hideouts” in the UAE to launch strikes on Kharg Island, home to the main terminal handling Iran’s oil exports, without providing evidence, as the war showed no signs of ending.
U.S. President Donald Trump said he hoped allies would send warships to help secure the vital Strait of Hormuz.
Meanwhile, Israeli strikes have deepened Lebanon's humanitarian crisis, with more than 800 people killed and over 850,000 displaced.
Here is the latest:
The U.N. statement says the gunfire “likely by non-state armed groups” happened while peacekeepers were patrolling around their bases on Sunday. It says two patrols fired back and no peacekeepers were injured.
Director of the National Economic Council Kevin Hassett was speaking on CBS News’ Face the Nation on Sunday.
“The latest number I was briefed on was 12,” Hassett said.
Pentagon estimates provided to Congress said the war would cost $11.3 billion in its first week. Hassett did not specify the time frame for the $12 billion in spending.
Asked whether the U.S. will need to request more money from Congress, Hassett responded: “I think right now we’ve got what we need, whether we have to go back to Congress for more is something that I think that Russ Vought and OMB will look into.”
OMB is the United States Office of Management and Budget.
A strike on the Javadieh neighborhood of southern Tehran on Friday hit a police station and several surrounding buildings.
Elham Movagghari, a resident of the area who spoke to journalists Sunday, said she was shocked by the attack.
“We were confused and didn’t know what had happened,” she said. “We just ran away.”
Another resident, Hossein Ghardashi, said the strike threw him across the room.
“When I got up and came to my senses, I saw that two or three pieces of glass had gone into my face and head” he said.
Gen. Luciano Portolano said the attack on the Ali Al Salem base occurred on Sunday morning and destroyed an Italian drone inside a shelter on the base.
No Italian personnel were injured, he said, in comments posted on X.
Italian troops are stationed at the base as part of a coalition task force combating the Islamic State militant group.
The Chief of Defense Staff’s post said the Italian task force’s assets “had been pre-emptively reduced” in recent days due to the ongoing war. It said some personnel remain at the base to carry out essential activities. It did not say how many Italians remain.
Some Israelis in northern Israel have little faith their communities will soon quiet down, after seeing the last Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire falter and fall apart. They fear the conflict thundering ahead could continue beyond the Iran war.
“There was a war, there was an agreement, and today again another war and there will be another agreement, and another war, and another agreement,” said Ahmad Zbidat, a renovation foreman at a hotel in Metula, just across the border from Lebanon.
Some 100,000 Israeli troops have amassed along the U.N.-mandated Blue Line that divides the two countries, in an anticipated ground invasion.
Security forces have flocked to the site where a missile fell in Tel Aviv, leaving a small crater in the ground.
It was one of at least 23 sites that the Israeli rescue service United Hatzalah said were damaged in one of several barrages from Iran on Sunday.
Shlomo Shlezinger, head of operations for the Israeli police, said a few cars and a motorcycle were damaged but no one was injured or killed at the site.
“Everyone was inside the safe rooms,” he said. “Thank you to all the civilians for their civilian discipline.”
European soccer’s governing body said Sunday that the security of the marquee game had been plunged into doubt by increasing tensions in the Middle East.
The Finalissima between South American champion Argentina and European champion Spain had been scheduled to take place in Doha on March 27.
Argentina and Spain were to play at Lusail Stadium, which staged the epic 2022 World Cup final. Argentina won a penalty shootout against France after Lionel Messi scored twice and Kylian Mbappé secured a hat trick in a thrilling 3-3 draw.
The violence in the Middle East has impacted international sport beyond the Finalissima. Formula 1’s races in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, scheduled for April, have been called off due to the war, while Trump has suggested that Iran will not participate in this summer’s World Cup that is co-hosted by the U.S.
The Paris-based agency, which is helping to coordinate the international effort to lower prices, says its member countries in Asia and Oceania plan to release stocks “immediately” and that reserves from Europe and the Americas “will be made available starting from the end of March.”
“This emergency collective action, by far the largest ever, provides a significant and welcome buffer,” it says in a statement.
The IEA announced Wednesday that it will make 400 million barrels of oil available from members’ emergency reserves — more than double the 182.7 million barrels that the IEA’s 32 countries released in 2022 in response to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
The IEA’s update on Sunday said its members have so far committed to making available a total of nearly 412 million barrels from government, industry and other stocks — of which 72% will be crude oil and the rest as oil products.
Benjamin Netanyahu posted his latest video Facebook to seemingly clear up confusion over an earlier post. Some who watched the earlier video thought it was an AI creation because at one point he appeared to have more than 10 fingers, and speculated that the Israeli leader might have died.
In a video filmed in an Israeli cafe and posted online Sunday, Netanyahu picks up a cappuccino with showy ease and pivots to the camera.
“They are saying on the internet that the prime minister’s dead? I’m dying for coffee,” he said.
Then he spread the fingers on each hand to show he has only 10, and sipped his coffee.
An Israeli military source told The Associated Press on Sunday that the country has enough interceptors to continue defending its skies against missiles from Iran.
The source spoke on condition of anonymity in line with military protocol.
The comment appeared to be an effort to tamp down growing speculation that Israel’s vaunted air defense system is running low.
Interceptors are the missiles that Israel’s air defense system uses to destroy incoming rockets before they hit populated areas.
By JULIA FRANKEL
President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi made a series of phone calls Sunday, speaking with Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani; Jordanian King Abdullah II; and UAE President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan.
Egypt’s foreign minister is touring the Gulf region.
El-Sissi said in a statement that Egypt is intensifying efforts seeking a de-escalation of tensions in the region.
Abbas Araghchi told CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday that Iranian negotiators were in talks with U.S. envoys when the decision to attack his country was made.
Araghchi said “we don’t see any reason why we should talk with Americans” about how to end the war and that Iran has had no “good experience talking with Americans.”
Araghchi says Iran is “open to countries who want to talk to us about the safe passage of their vessels” through the Strait of Hormuz and has been approach by “a number’’ of nations about that. He didn’t name them.
Asked about the fate of his country’s nuclear material, the minister said it was under rubble from attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities and “we have no plan to recover” it from there.
The military said it had struck Ibrahim Ghazali — the brother of Lebanese-born Ayman Ghazali, who attacked the synagogue last week — because he managed weapons for a Hezbollah unit that fired rockets at Israel.
The Associated Press was not able to verify that Ibrahim Ghazali was a militant.
A Lebanese official, who requested anonymity because he could not publicly discuss details of the airstrike, confirmed that Ibrahim Ghazali was killed.
The official told AP that Ghazali’s children, Ali and Fatima, and brother, Kassim, were also killed in the strike that hit their home just after sunset.
Authorities have said 41-year-old Ayman Ghazali attacked the Temple Israel synagogue outside Detroit after learning that four of his family members had been killed in an Israeli strike.
By Bassem Mroue
▶ Read more
Crowds gathered Sunday for the burial of 29-year-old Huseyin Firat in Reyhanli, southern Turkey, the Demiroren News Agency reported.
He died from wounds sustained in a March 6 attack on a convoy returning from Afghanistan to Turkey, according to Turkish media reports.
Video footage taken days later showed his vehicle shredded by shrapnel and a large crater near the city of Zanjan, in northwest Iran.
U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright says he’s been “in dialogue” with some of the countries that Trump hopes will send warships to counter Iran’s efforts to restrict shipping in the Strait of Hormuz. He’s not saying which ones.
Asked on NBC’s “Meet the Press” whether shipping through the critical waterway is safe at the moment, Wright responded: “No, it is not.”
He noted that many other countries, especially in Asia, are more dependent than the United States on energy supplies that are shipped through the strait.
“So of course the whole world will be united on the need to open Hormuz and clearly we will have the support of other nations to achieve that objective,” he said.
Wright said he expected China to “be a constructive partner” in efforts to reopen the strait.
Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi promised “full support and solidarity” in a message to Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani.
Foreign minister Badr Abdelatty, who was visiting Qatar on Sunday on the first stop of a tour of the Gulf region, delivered the president’s message.
Abdelatty called for a deescalation of hostilities in the region. He said activating a Joint Defense Treaty would “safeguard the security, sovereignty, unity, and territorial integrity of Arab states.”
State media reports that four refrigerated trucks carrying medicine, medical supplies, clothing and food left the capital Ashgabat for Iran on Sunday.
The shipment, funded by a charitable foundation, was sent “to the people of the Islamic Republic of Iran, primarily children, as a sign of friendly and fraternal relations,” according to state media. It showed footage of a prayer being recited for the safe delivery of the supplies.
Officials said approximately 250 people from 16 countries have so far crossed into Turkmenistan, an isolated, gas-rich Central Asian nation, which shares a 1,148-kilometer (713-mile) border with Iran.
Turkmenistan maintains one of the strictest visa policies in the world. It provided safe passage to more than 4,000 foreign nationals from 52 countries during the Israel-Iran war last summer.
Police and city workers scoured the area of what appeared to be a cluster munition impact in Tel Aviv on Sunday, attempting to locate and clear any unexploded ordnance.
City workers used street sweepers and power washers to hose down an area where a small munition damaged two cars and spread shrapnel across a small park. Cluster bombs can be exceptionally dangerous for the public as small munitions that are released may not explode on impact and pose a serious danger for passersby.
The impact also left a hole in the pavement, next to a bomb shelter that serves as a youth center at the local swimming pool. Within 90 minutes, bulldozers and other heavy equipment arrived to clear debris and patch the hole.
Israel police said there were a number of impact sites in the greater Tel Aviv area after Sunday’s attacks that left four people injured, one moderately.
Chris Wright told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday that there’s been a “short-term disruption’ to the flow of energy and that “Americans are feeling it right now. Americans will feel it for a few more weeks.”
Asked whether the war will be over in a matter of weeks, Wright said: “I think that’s the likely time frame, yes.”
He said gas prices will start to come back down after the war is over.
“At the end, we will have removed the greatest risk to global energy supplies. We’ll go to a world more abundant in energy, more affordable energy.”
Asked about whether pump prices will fall below $3 per gallon by the summer travel season, Wright said: “there’s a very good chance that’ll be true. There’s no guarantees in war.”
The displaced struggled to keep their tents intact as pouring rain and fierce winds hammered the city’s downtown waterfront area Sunday.
An AP team on the ground witnessed one tent succumb to the winds, blowing away entirely.
Fadi Younes, one displaced man who fled to the beach from Beirut’s southern suburbs, found himself battling with his collapsed tent. He had already rebuilt it once after a storm two days ago, he said.
He gestured to new mattresses, now waterlogged, that he bought after the last ones got soaked through.
“I hope that today things in the country will be set right and everyone can return to their homes. A person only truly feels at ease in their own home,” he said.
Younes is among more than 830,000 people displaced by Israeli strikes and evacuation warnings in Lebanon. The Norwegian Refugee Council says that amounts to one in every seven people.
Waltz was asked on CNN Sunday whether the U.S. president was prepared to target oil facilities on Kharg island, which handles 90% of Iran’s crude oil exports, and if so, if he was worried that that could risk even more of an escalation in the war.
“President Trump’s not going to take any options off the table,” Waltz said. “I would certainly think he would maintain that optionality if he wants to take down their their energy infrastructure.”
U.S. Central Command posted on X Saturday that it had struck military targets on the island, but preserved the oil infrastructure.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi’s comments about the reopening of the crucial Strait of Hormuz came in an interview with the London-based Al-Araby al-Jadeed published Sunday.
“The Strait of Hormuz is not generally closed, but only to the U.S. and its allies, and we will continue this policy as long as the attacks continue,” he was quoted as saying.
The world’s largest aluminum smelter outside China said Sunday it would gradually shut down nearly one-fifth of its production capacity as exports remain blocked through the Strait of Hormuz.
Aluminium Bahrain, or Alba, promised a “controlled and safe shutdown strategy.”
Smelters run at high temperatures and take time to shut down or restart without endangering equipment or damage the containers that hold molten metals.
The company told buyers last week it couldn’t meet its obligations. The timeline of a phased partial shutdown means global aluminum supplies could remain tight even if transit through the Strait of Hormuz quickly returns to normal, keeping upward pressure on prices for products such as construction materials and cars.
Aluminum and oil make up a big part of Bahrain’s economy and limits on production and export threaten to deepen woes in the Persian Gulf Island nation being hit with Iranian airstrikes.
There was no immediate word on damage or casualties.
It was one of the multiple barrages targeting Israel Sunday. It damaged an apartment building in the central Israeli ultra-Orthodox city of Bnei Brak.
The country’s Magen David Adom rescue services said that one man was injured by glass shrapnel. Photos and video showed a blackened hole in place of the apartment’s windows.
Magen David Adom also said paramedics were treating another man in the nearby city of Ramat Gan who sustained blast injuries. It comes after an earlier barrage hit 23 sites in the Tel Aviv area and injured two people.
Collapsed concrete, exposed rebar and sheets of plastic spilled onto the streets of southern Beirut Sunday morning. Smoke rose into the air and small fires burned.
That was the scene in the city’s suburb of Haret Hreik, after a night of continued Israeli airstrikes.
In just 10 days, more than 800,000 people in Lebanon have been displaced by war, just over a year since the last conflict uprooted over a million Lebanese from their homes. Israeli strikes have killed 826 people, including 106 children and 65 women, since the conflict between Hezbollah and Israel reignited on March 2, according to the Health Ministry.
Pope Leo XIV on Sunday escalated his appeal for peace by directly addressing the leaders who launched the war.
“On behalf of the Christians of the Middle East and all women and men of good will, I appeal to those responsible for this conflict,” Leo said. “Cease fire so that avenues for dialogue may be reopened. Violence can never lead to the justice, stability, and peace that the people are waiting for.”
While Leo didn’t mention the United States or Israel by name, he mentioned the bombings that targeted a school — an apparent reference to the missile strike on an elementary school in Iran in the opening days of the war that killed over 165 people, many of them children.
The Vatican has highlighted the carnage of the Minab strike, running a photo of the mass grave for the victims on the front page of its official newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, under the headline “The Face of War.” U.S. officials have said outdated intelligence likely led to the United States launching the strike, and that an investigation is ongoing.
Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre said it should be the responsibility of the countries involved to “find ways of ending the hostilities that now have great impact around the world.”
Speaking alongside the leaders of Canada and the other Nordic nations on Sunday, Støre said “it seems to us that the plan for how it will develop is pretty unclear.” He added: “That’s the danger with initiating wars, that they rarely follow a script.”
He said that “we are concerned to see that there is still an escalation.”
A bulldozer clears debris from the rubble of buildings destroyed in an Israeli airstrike in Dahiyeh, Beirut's southern suburbs, Lebanon, Sunday, March 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
Debris litters the street as smoke rises from buildings damaged in an Israeli airstrike in Dahiyeh, Beirut's southern suburbs, Lebanon, Sunday, March 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
Policemen stand guard next to the banners showing portraits of the late Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei at the Enqelab-e-Eslami, or Islamic Revolution, square in downtown Tehran, Iran, Saturday, March 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
A woman displays a poster of the Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei as she waves her country's flag during a campaign in support of the government at the Enqelab-e-Eslami, or Islamic Revolution, square in downtown Tehran, Iran, Saturday, March 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
Israeli security forces inspect damage at the site of an Iranian missile strike in Holon, central Israel, Sunday, March 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)
Two men ride their motorbike past a billboard of the Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei in downtown Tehran, Iran, Saturday, March 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
A man chants slogan while the body of Gen. Ali Shamkhani, secretary of Iran's Defense Council and a senior adviser to the Supreme Leader who was killed in a strike, is being buried at the courtyard of the Imamzadeh Saleh shrine in Tehran, Iran, Saturday, March 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
Rescue workers inspect an apartment damaged in an Israeli airstrike as thick smoke fills the building in the southern port city of Sidon, Lebanon, Saturday, March 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Mohammad Zaatari)
Fire and plumes of smoke rise from an oil facility in Fujairah, United Arab Emirates, Saturday, March 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Altaf Qadri)
