Claudia Freed

Inside the reverse logistics education gap and the economic blind spot keeping it invisible Special Guest Blog Post written by Deborah Dull   Tony Sciarrotta has been asking the same question at industry conferences for years. As the Senior Director of Circularity and Reverse Logistics at the National Retail Federation, he knows what answer he’s going to get. But he keeps asking anyway. “Anybody in here go to school for returns management, reverse logistics, circularity? Any degrees in those fields the room?” It’s rare that anyone raises their hand. “That’s what’s wrong with our industry,” Sciarrotta told me at NRF Rev this January, the first conference under NRF’s new reverse logistics banner. “We still need to fix it.”   The Numbers That Should Make Headlines Here’s what makes reverse logistics so fascinating: the scale is staggering, but the infrastructure to support it needs to be stronger. According to the National Retail Federation, American retailers processed approximately $890 billion in returns in 2024 which is roughly 17% of all retail sales – and it’s higher for ecommerce. But that number almost certainly understates reality. “We have a fragmented industry,” Sciarrotta explained. “Where are all those returns going? It has to be…

written by Deborah Dull, on site at GreenBiz 2026   One of the most repeated excuses in the circular economy space is that American consumers just do not care enough. They will not sort their waste. They will not pay a premium for sustainable products. They will not participate in take-back programs. Europe is different, the story goes. Americans are a lost cause. Today I sat through a panel where that story got taken apart, piece by piece, with actual data. On this panel were Tom Szaky the CEO at TerraCycle and Loop, Gary Lewis the CEO at Resourcify, Rob Whitter the Head of Climate and Sustainability at Visa, and Casper Venbjerg Hansen the Senior Director of Sustainability Risk & Compliance for Ambu A/S; all facilitated by Lauren Phipps of MOLG. A company that runs in-store recycling programs across more than a million locations in 20 countries looked at their numbers. Whether someone was bringing back a wetsuit in Japan, cosmetics in France, or gear in the United States, the behavior was statistically identical. You could not tell the countries apart. American consumers who chose to participate were participating at the exact same rate as everyone else. Then there was…