Journal · Sustainability data

The carbon cost of one wrong-size return, in three numbers.

When a garment heads back, it's not just the margin that burns. We crunched what it actually costs — for the climate, the brand, you.

1. One parcel round-trip = 1.6 kg of CO₂. For a typical apparel parcel, the return leg (last-mile truck, warehouse intake, sorting, reconditioning) accounts for 0.8 to 2.3 kg of CO₂, with a sector median of 1.6 kg1. That number does not include over-packaging or items destroyed after several cycles.

2. 24 % of online fashion orders come back — half because of size. Average return rate is 24 % across European fashion ecom, peaking at 40 % on some platforms2. Shoppers cite wrong size in 52 % of cases3. “Bracketing” — ordering two sizes to compare — multiplies impact by two to three on those orders.

3. €5.4 billion vanish from European margins every year. Logistics + relabel + markdown + destroyed inventory together represent 8–12 % of European fashion ecom revenue, or roughly €5.4 bn in 20254. For a €50 M DTC, that's €4–6 M that will never return.

Why evow exists.

None of these lines are inevitable. The majority comes from one cause: people buy the wrong size because brands don't speak the same language. A Sézane M ≠ a COS M ≠ a Uniqlo M. The tape measure tells the same number to every brand; brands reply differently.

Our mirror builds a cross-brand equivalence table (≈ 2 900 lines today, 277+ brands) between your real measurements and each brand's own size grid. No guesswork, no 14-question quiz: your body, their grids, the right match.

When the right size shows up at the scroll, bracketing collapses, returns collapse, margin comes back, and those 1.6 kg of CO₂ stay in the warehouse.

Set up my reflection — 2 min

Sources

  1. ADEME & eTrust, “E-commerce carbon footprint”, 2024 meta-study.
  2. Statista Retail Europe, “Online apparel return rates 2023”.
  3. Narvar Consumer Report, “Why shoppers return”, 2024 edition.
  4. McKinsey Apparel, “The hidden cost of returns”, 2025.

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