Reduce Global Warming Footprint by Optimising Customer Returns
Floods, wildfires, hurricanes. How do goods manufacturing affect our climate?
What actually is global warming?
Global warming is the rising temperature of our planet’s atmosphere. The accumulation of chemical elements in the atmosphere is the leading cause of this condition. The elements, mainly CO2, make the atmosphere opaque, thicker and trap heat. If you have ever been in the greenhouse, you have experienced what that effect feels like. In fact, this thickening of the atmosphere is even called the greenhouse effect.
The heat from the sun penetrates the atmosphere, some of it is absorbed by the planet, and when the rest of it cannot escape back into the cosmos, it ends up lingering on the planet’s surface, heating it.
Why is global warming bad?
It causes flooding
Did you know that Average Global Temperatures during Ice Ages were merely 3–6 Degrees Celsius lower than they are today. So, a relatively small difference in global heat energy levels has a HUGE impact on the planet as a whole ecosystem.
Rising temperatures cause ice caps to melt, resulting in increased sea levels, which cause floods all around the world to the coastal cities. As people’s homes are washed away, they have to move to the inland towns or a more developed cities. And when city’s population increases, so does the competition for resources, such as water, food, energy and living space.
Another cause. Wildfires
The increased global temperature creates perfect conditions for wildfires, which only need a spark to get started in an ever-warming climate. The spreading of wildfire depends on ecosystem conditions, such as moisture in the ground, humidity and how long has it been since the last rainfall.
Dried out environments, called tinderbox, are much more prone to allowing the fires to spread more rapidly due to a lack of moss and diverse undergrowth, which helps to absorb water. Wildfires in the forests take a long time to extinguish, meaning they release a lot of carbon into the atmosphere reinforcing the climate feedback mechanism. More fires release more carbon into the atmosphere, which means more global warming, which means more fires and so on.
Massive amounts of animals are destroyed during the wildfires, and as the biodiversity is reduced, the forests become even more vulnerable. For example, during the recent fires in the United States and Australia, whole towns were destroyed, and people had to leave their homes in search fo safer areas.
Let’s talk about increasing wet-bulb temperatures
Raised climate temperature means a higher wet-bulb temperature. High wet-bulb temperature is a measure of heat in humidity. As humans, we cool ourselves by sweating; however, when the relative humidity is nearly 100%, the sweat does not evaporate well, so people can’t cool down, even if given unlimited shade and drinking water. Our bodies are designed to work at a specific temperature; in the high-wet bulb temperature environments, the body gets hotter and hotter. And without the ability to cool down, you can actually die.
Global warming also causes harsher hurricanes
Increased global temperatures cause harsher weather conditions, such as storms and hurricanes. Scientists used computer models and calculated that Hurricane Harvey would have been a lot less severe if it had happened 100 years ago. The global atmospheric shift means that when hurricanes form in the ocean, they are much more substantial.
According to the National Academy of Sciences, satellite images dating back to 1979 showed that global warming has already increased the likelihood of a hurricane strengthening to a Category 3 or stronger by about 8% in each decade.
What are industrial revolution’s effect on global warming?
The greenhouse effect causes the global warming of our planet’s atmosphere. It accumulates water vapour, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and chlorofluorocarbons gasses in the atmosphere, which let the sunlight in but keep some of it from escaping, like the greenhouse walls. So the more greenhouse gasses we have in the atmosphere, the more heat gets trapped, strengthening the greenhouse effect and heating the planet’s atmosphere.
Since the industrial revolution in 1840, we have increased the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere by more than a third. Because of that, we currently live in a warmer climate by 1.3 degrees, and children born today are seven times more likely to face extreme weather events than their grandparents.
The rise of the global population only increased the usage of fossil fuels, which is the primary energy source in our daily lives. Fossil fuels power our businesses, fuel our cars and keep lights on in our homes. The problem is that the extraction of energy and resources from fossil fuels produces carbon, which is the gas that strengthens the greenhouse effect increasing global warming.
Let’s talk about how electronic goods manufacturing affects climate change
Keeping the factories running and producing goods requires vast energy and resources. Unfortunately, the energy and resources most of the time comes from fossil fuels. By now, we know that usage of fossil fuels increases CO2 levels in the atmosphere, which warms up the atmosphere causing global climate change for the worse.
Living in our consumerist society means we have a massive appetite for buying new goods and require vast amounts of them to be manufactured. And as we now know, nearly half of all the goods purchased online get returned.
As a manufacturer, you add to the global warming issue by manufacturing new products. This addition only increases if you do not have an efficient returned good processing strategy and destroy returned goods. This kind of strategy not only adds to global warming; it also adds to another problem in the world, which is electronic waste.
By ensuring you have an optimal returned goods processing system, you can decrease your impact on global climate change, reduce waste and keep your customers happy. In addition, the customer will have a positive outlook towards the brand if they can return the item easy and are sure the business has environmentally friendly processing strategies in place.
How to improve your global warming response through improving your returns process
Building a good returns processing strategy might require professional help, especially in the electronic goods industry. However, we suggest taking the following steps to start maximising the value of your returned goods.
- Reach out to a reputable third-party reverse logistics supplier, such TFix
- Work with your supplier to come up with a solid returns handling procedure
- Integrate and test the strategy
- When you have a process running and dealing with your future returns you can deal with stock that have accumulated over time
Let’s sum up what we talked about here
Global warming is the effect that traps the heat inside our planet’s atmosphere. It is called the greenhouse effect. The greenhouse effect is caused by humans burning fossil fuels and releasing CO2 particles into the atmosphere, which trap the heat, causing our planet to warm up.
Warming up the climate is wrong because it creates perfect conditions for wildfires, hurricanes, floods and other extreme weather events.
Manufacturing electronic goods require energy, which is acquired by burning fossil fuels. Most of the new electronic equipment is sold online, and e-commerce as an industry has high return rates.
Electronic equipment manufacturers can reduce the need for the new stock manufacturing by having an efficient returned goods processing system. It replenishes stock, reduces warehousing costs, and keeps customers and the planet happy.