WHAT HAPPENS TO ALL THE STUFF WE RETURN

Think your rejects go back on the shelves? Think again.

- David Owen

THE 20-SOMETHING daughter of a friend recently ordered half a dozen new dresses. She'd been invited to the wedding of a college classmate and knew in advance that she was going to send back all but the one she liked best.

"Swimsuits and dresses for weddings-you never buy just one," says Joanie Demer, co-founder of Krazy Coupon Lady. For some online apparel retailers, returns now average 40% of sales.

Steady growth in internet shopping has been accompanied by steady growth in returns. A forest's worth of artificial Christmas trees goes back every January. Bags of green plastic Easter grass go back every spring. Returns of large-screen TVs surge immediately following the Super Bowl.

People who buy portable generators during weather emergencies use them until the emergencies have ended, and then those go back too. People who've been invited to fancy parties sometimes buy expensive outfits or accessories, then return them the next day, caviar stains and all-a practice known as wardrobing.

Brick-and-mortar stores also allow shoppers to return unwanted purchases. "Petco takes back dead fish," Demer said. "Home Depot and Lowe's let you return dead plants, for a year. You just have to be shameless enough to stand in line with the thing you killed."

Last year, I attended a three-day conference in Las Vegas conducted by the Reverse Logistics Association, a trade group whose members deal with product returns, unsold inventories and other capitalist jetsam. The field is large and growing. Dale Rogers, a business professor at Arizona State, gave a presentation with his son Zachary Rogers, a business professor at Colorado State, during which they said that winter-holiday returns in the United States are now worth more than $300 billion a year.