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A decade ago, Patagonia brought its Worn Wear program to fruition.

At the time, brands taking responsibility for their product's end-of-life was uncommon. Today, it’s becoming a new standard, with many forward-thinking brands running take-back programs.

Another strong trend is the growth of Extended Producer Responsibility for textiles. These requirements are taking shape across the globe and will eventually hold brands legally accountable for better product disposal management.

With these emerging patterns in mind, we’ve created a comprehensive guide to take-back programs—designed to help your sustainable brand understand, evaluate, and implement a successful take-back program.

• What is a Take-Back Program?
• How do Take-Back Programs Work?
• How is a Take-Back Program Different from Recommerce?
• Are Take-Back Programs Good for the Planet?
• EcoEnclose’s Perspective on Take-Back Programs
• Elements of an Environmentally Positive Take-Back Program
• Successful Take-Back Programs
• How to Launch Your eCommerce Brand’s Take-Back Program

A take-back program is a brand's initiative to manage the end-of-life of its products and, sometimes, its packaging. Customers send products through the program, often receiving points or discounts from the brand. The brand gets these products and processes them internally or sends them to a partner.

While this may sound simple on paper, there are many factors in creating a successful take-back program—successful because brands can process products into new materials and customers participate in the program.

With that in mind, here is a breakdown of each element of a take-back program.

According to the Circular Economy Practitioner Guide, a take-back program “is an initiative organized by a manufacturer or retailer to collect used products or materials from consumers and reintroduce them to the original processing and manufacturing cycle.”

This definition focuses heavily on the recycling of products.

In reality, take-back programs generally have multiple components that include the following.

Brands provide their customers with a way to give back apparel and accessories once they reach the end of their useful life for the customer.

At this stage, brands are very clear about what items they will and will not accept for take-back.

Some brands structure their program only to accept products from their own company. Others allow customers to send back any item in the garment category. Yet others are very flexible, telling customers to return any garments or accessories.

E-commerce brands typically require customers to send kits in the mail, while brands with a physical retail presence may also provide an in-store drop-off location.

As part of this step, brands often create a Take-Back Kit that customers can order (for free or at a cost), either as a one-off purchase or as an add-on component of an existing purchase.

The take-back kit generally includes the following:

• A mailer that customers can fill with used goods
• A shipping label for customers to use to end in the filled mailer
• Informational or marketing materials to engage customers

Creating a thoughtful Take-Back Kit can significantly increase customers’ use rate. We will discuss this in more detail in a later section.

Using the Take-Back Kit or a brand’s other preferred method, customers collect the products included in the take-back program and send them back to the brand.

Customers then typically receive one or more forms of positive feedback, both internal and external, for participating in the program.

First and foremost, customers internally experience the benefit of more responsibly disposing of clothing they no longer use.

Additionally, most brands provide external positive feedback by giving customers who participate in the program a gift card or discount code to be used on a future purchase. This code may come with the Take-Back Kit or be sent to the customer after receiving and sorting the goods.

This positive feedback can help customers feel satisfied from participating in the program, increase their motivation to do so again, strengthen their relationship with the brand, and provide an opportunity for word-of-mouth marketing.

Brands, or their reclaiming partner, consolidate the products after the customers return them. Next, they generally sort and separate them into categories for processing.

Categories for sorting returned goods may include the following:

• Wearable and resellable
• Wearable and ready for donation
• Repairable and then prepared for sale or donation
• Unwearable

Some brands may only use some of these categories, such as designating items only for reselling or recycling.

The separation process can be very labor and cost-intensive, depending on how goods will be recycled. Occasionally, apparel may need to be separated by material, such as sorting cotton, polyesters, and blends, with buttons or extras removed.

Because of this, some brands choose to work with partners rather than consolidating and sorting products in-house. These partners can often take advantage of volume efficiencies more easily than individual brands.

Once items have been separated, brands typically work with partners to ensure that all products and materials are processed responsibly through reselling, donating, recycling, or downcycling.

Reselling

Some brands host and manage their platforms to repair and resell their used goods, but many choose to work with partners such as ThredUP. These partners have created entire organizations around reselling used goods and often have the infrastructure and reach unavailable to some smaller brands.

Donating

Brands can’t simply unload their used products at a Goodwill. Instead, they generally establish partnerships with nonprofit organizations positioned to handle and distribute donations of specific products. For example, a luxury brand might partner with an organization like Dress for Success, or a footwear brand might partner with a nonprofit like Soles4Souls.

Recycle or Downcycle

Unwearable goods are typically pulled to recycle or downcycle the material. Recycling means they become textiles or accessories in their next life, while downcycling means they are shredded and used in other industries like insulation or cushioning. Some organizations that help with recycling or downcycling include Redmondis, Cirq, and Bonded Logic. Accelerating Circularity and The Conscious Fashion Forum maintains databases of textile recyclers.

Products are then sent to their designated partner or destination and enter the cycle of use again.

Recommerce, or reverse commerce, involves the resale of previously owned products.

Recommerce can take many forms, from individuals selling items directly to each other on platforms like eBay or Craigslist to brands and third-party companies buying back products from consumers, refurbishing them, and then selling them as secondhand items.

On the surface, this may sound the same as a take-back program. However, these two types of initiatives differ in several key ways.

Objective

Recommerce centers on finding new users for sellable products to extend their useful lives. However, it rarely includes other end-of-life options.

Take-back programs focus on reducing waste by ensuring all products and materials are processed properly. Sometimes, this means resale, but it can also include donation or recycling.

Process

Recommerce involves collecting used items, assessing their condition, refurbishing or repairing them as needed, and reselling them. Individual sellers, specialized recommerce platforms, or brands themselves can do this.

Take-back programs start when customers return their products to the brand at the end of their useful life for that customer. Brands then determine if these products can be resold or if they should be donated, recycled, or downcycled.

Customer Interaction

Recommerce participants interact with the system primarily as buyers of secondhand goods or sellers looking to get value from items they no longer need.

Take-back program participants are more focused on responsibly disposing of products they no longer use, often without a direct financial return. However, they might receive incentives from the brand to participate in the program.

Summary

While take-back programs and recommerce aim to enhance sustainability and reduce waste, they do so through different mechanisms.

Recommerce programs focus solely on reselling usable products to new users and may be run by individuals, organizations, or brands. Customers participate as buyers.

Take-back programs encompass the broader end-of-life process for used goods, often including resale. Customers participate by sending in products.

This is a tricky question that can’t be answered with a blanket yes or no response.

Take-back programs like reuse and recycling alone will not significantly reduce the massive environmental and ethical challenges the fashion industry poses.

Decades ago, consumers purchased clothing several times yearly and kept pieces for years - if not generations.

Nowadays, many consumers in wealthy countries shop as a pastime, leaving them with an excessive wardrobe filled with garments designed to last only a few wears before being discarded.

Today, the fashion industry is responsible for an estimated 4-8.6% of global carbon emissions.

While this statistic sounds significant, it still doesn’t account for the other major negative environmental consequences of fashion—such as deforestation, water pollution, air pollution, and poor health and conditions for many workers across the supply chain.

Fashion’s massive negative environmental impact is driven by the sheer volume of goods produced yearly. Particularly over the last two decades, this volume has been driven up by companies like H&M and Forever21, which promote a cheap “disposable clothing” culture with rock-bottom pricing and no durability.

These companies and many other brands often overproduce garments for each season’s lines to manage inventory strategically. They burn their excess at the end of the season to ensure this overproduction doesn’t lead to competitive threats from discount retailers.

Fast fashion brands also create ever-shifting trends, micro seasons, and other gimmicks to encourage consumers to purchase more products more frequently, making clothing feel outdated even more quickly.

The fashion industry's negative impact is not primarily due to a lack of methods to deal with waste.

The heart of the issue is the industry trends that encourage such massive overproduction. A take-back program will never solve this problem on a cultural or systemic level.

Some argue these programs could contribute to overconsumption by giving consumers an emotional salve to the guilt they may otherwise feel when purchasing and discarding so many items.

This argument is similar to a common objection against packaging recycling, which presses the point that recycling makes people feel good - leading them to forget to consider whether or not they even needed the packaging and the product it came in.

While this can be a valid point, particularly in take-back programs not accompanied by a higher-level commitment to sustainability, we still see a place for these initiatives in many brands.

Our view on the merits of take-back programs is more balanced. It draws from our perspectives on packaging and recycling in the packaging world.

Our sustainable packaging framework is clear in the world of packaging: optimizing packaging for recycling and maximizing the rate at which it is recycled is critical.

However, this should be done after brands design their packaging thoughtfully at the front end, such as using recycled content with high post-consumer waste, minimizing the materials used, and manufacturing ethically.

Suppose packaging is designed to be recyclable, but thought has yet to be given to the source materials and environmental strategy around the packaging at the front end. In that case, recyclability is merely a token of sustainability and should not be celebrated.

Bringing this same perspective to take-back programs:

A take-back program should be the cherry on top of your brand’s sustainability goals—not the whole sundae.

Develop the program after (or, at the very least, along with) efforts to make your product, supply chain, and production volumes as sustainable and ethical as possible.

For example, before creating a take-back program, consider the following:

• Have you reviewed your textile strategy? Are you using mainly preferred materials and avoiding textiles of major concern?

• Are your products high quality and made to last, designed to hold up with hundreds of wash cycles?

• Will washing your products lead to microplastic pollution?

• Do you have a production strategy that achieves your business goals while avoiding overproduction and excessive inventory?

• Is your business strategy discouraging or encouraging fast fashion cycles and excessive consumption?

If you still need to improve these or other areas of your business, consider delaying the development of a take-back program to address core issues.

Or, if you decide to go ahead with the program, prioritize extreme honesty in your messaging—representing the take-back program as a small part of a broader effort to elevate the ethics and sustainability of your brand.

If and when you determine that a take-back program is an appropriate addition to your brand’s sustainability initiatives, strive to bring a vision of true circularity to everything you do.

The easiest way to get started is to take your brand’s used goods back, donate what you can, and either discard the rest or downcycle them into another material, such as building insulation.

Many brands do this by engaging a partner to handle the entire process. While this helps reduce the cost and effort of getting started, it can also lead to brands distancing themselves from the strategy, circularity, and actual impact of the take-back program.

As you design your program, commit to continuously elevating its impact, transparency, and circularity over time—whether you’re working in-house or with a partner.

Here are some tips for developing a thoughtful take-back program that prioritizes circularity.

Investing in the repair and resale of goods is daunting. But, as Patagonia has demonstrated with Worn Wear, doing so means putting your money where your mouth is—giving your customers the option to buy your used goods instead of your new ones.

Repairing goods for resale can create a (short-term) hit to your sales and bottom line, but it demonstrates a major understanding of the actual downsides of fashion and a commitment to changing the paradigm long-term.

Avoid partnering with a nonprofit and then dumping all goods received on them. Organizations like Goodwill are already overrun with clothing, and sorting sellable goods, goods to export, and items for the landfill is a significant burden.

Instead of sending everything straight to your partner, take the time to sort them and send only highly usable items.

By absorbing the burden of sorting, you can (1) become a valuable, high-quality partner to these organizations and (2) ensure that non-usable items can be processed for recycling or downcycling rather than ending up in landfills or other countries.

Many successful businesses have grown around taking used products and downcycling them into other materials.

One example is Bonded Logic, Inc., which turns old denim into usable goods like building insulation, pet bedding inserts, and more. This is a positive step forward, as it extends the useful life of these materials and diverts waste from the landfill.

This type of downcycling should not be the final goal of recycling in take-back programs. Ideally, brands should look for ways to recycle their goods into apparel and accessories. This promotes greater circularity and decreases the demand for virgin materials while increasing the demand for recycled textiles.

The Ultimate Vision: Recycling Goods Back Into Your Products

To fully embrace circularity, brands adopting a take-back program should have a vision of recycling the inputs into their goods.

This goal represents a meaningful step towards true sustainability because it (1) fuels the development of much-needed technology to mechanically or chemically recycle textiles back into textiles, and (2) it means you are making your goods out of your goods, offsetting the virgin inputs you would otherwise be putting into your products.

Long-term, if we can make all apparel out of apparel, we can significantly reduce the negative consequences of the fashion industry.

Accurate data tracking and transparent communication are critical in any sustainability effort, and take-back programs are no exception.

Whether you work with a partner or not, track:

• How many customers send back items
• How many lbs of waste received
• How much contamination is received

Also keep track of what percentage of these received goods are:

• Repairs and resold
• Donated
• Recycled (along with what they’re recycled into)
• Downcycled (along with what they’re downcycled into)
• Landfilled
• Incinerated

This data shows you the current impact of your brand’s program, and it can also help you identify areas for improvement and measure this improvement over time.

As you track and measure your program's results and impact, communicate your progress clearly and honestly with your customers.

This may feel counterintuitive, but it will strengthen your brand image in the long run. In almost every case, customers prefer an honest look at a brand’s continued efforts (shortcomings and all) to a greenwashed image of perfection.

Share with your customers the partners you work with for reclaiming, recycling, downcycling, donations, etc. This provides much-needed transparency in the world of textile recycling and can set your brand apart as a leader in the push for more ethical, circular fashion.

Many brands have implemented take-back programs on some scale. Below, find a closer look at several successful programs that engage customers and create a positive impact as part of an overarching brand focus on sustainability.

Ready to dive in to creating your take-back program?

Read our next guide for an in-depth look at how to:

Establish Your Vision and Goals
Determine Your Plan for Goods Received
Choose Your Strategic Partners
Choose Your Acceptable Goods
Structure Your Customer and Operational Components
Develop Your Mail-In Package
Launch, Monitor, Track, and Share Your Data
Produce Your Mail-Back Kit with EcoEnclose