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A decade ago, Patagonia launched its Worn Wear program—rare at the time for brands to take responsibility for a product’s end-of-life. Today, take-back programs are becoming standard, and Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) laws for textiles are emerging worldwide, making brands legally accountable for disposal.

This guide will help your sustainable brand understand, evaluate, and implement an effective take-back program.

Table of Contents

• 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.

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 offer customers a way to return apparel and accessories at the end of their useful life, clearly stating what they will and won’t accept. Some accept only their own products, others accept any garment, and some also include accessories.

E-commerce brands typically provide mail-in kits, while those with stores may offer drop-off locations. A Take-Back Kit—ordered free or for a fee—usually includes a mailer, prepaid shipping label, and informational materials. Well-designed kits can significantly boost participation.

Using a Take-Back Kit or other brand method, customers collect and return eligible products.

They benefit internally from responsibly disposing of unused items and externally through incentives like gift cards or discount codes—provided with the kit or after the brand receives and sorts the goods.

These rewards boost satisfaction, encourage repeat participation, strengthen brand loyalty, and spark 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:

• Usable and resellable
• Usable and ready for donation
• Repairable and then prepared for sale or donation
• Not usable

The separation process can be very labor and cost-intensive, depending on how goods will be recycled. For example, 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 are sorted, brands partner with organizations to process them responsibly—through resale, donation, recycling, or downcycling.

• Reselling: Some brands run their own resale platforms, while others partner with companies like ThredUP, which offer broader infrastructure and reach.
  
  

• Donating: Brands typically work with nonprofits equipped to handle specific products—e.g., luxury goods with Dress for Success, footwear with Soles4Souls.

• Recycling/Downcycling: Unwearable goods are recycled into new textiles or accessories, or downcycled into materials like insulation or cushioning. Partners include Redmondis, Cirq, and Bonded Logic, with databases maintained by Accelerating Circularity and The Conscious Fashion Forum.

From there, products re-enter the cycle of use in a new form.

Recommerce (reverse commerce) is the resale of previously owned products. It ranges from peer-to-peer sales on platforms like eBay to brands or third parties buying back, refurbishing, and reselling items.

Though similar to take-back programs, they differ in focus, process, and customer interaction:

• Objective: Recommerce extends a product’s life through resale only. Take-back programs manage all end-of-life options—resale, donation, recycling, or downcycling.

• Process: Recommerce refurbishes and resells used goods. Take-back programs collect items from customers, then decide whether to resell or responsibly process them.

• Customer Role: Recommerce customers are buyers or sellers seeking value. Take-back participants return products mainly for responsible disposal, sometimes with brand incentives.

Both aim to reduce waste, but recommerce is resale-focused, while take-back programs cover the full end-of-life cycle.

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, people bought clothes only a few times a year and kept them for years—even generations.

Today, in many wealthy countries, shopping is a pastime, leading to overflowing wardrobes of garments made to last just a few wears.

Today, the fashion industry is responsible for an estimated 4-8.6% of global carbon emissions—not including other major harms like deforestation, water and air pollution, and unsafe working conditions.

This massive footprint is fueled by the sheer volume of clothing produced each year, a trend accelerated over the past two decades by brands like H&M and Forever 21. These companies promote a disposable clothing culture with rock-bottom prices, low durability, and constant overproduction—often burning unsold inventory to avoid discount resale.

Fast fashion also drives ever-shifting trends and “micro seasons” to make clothes feel outdated faster, pushing consumers to buy more, more often.

The fashion industry’s impact stems less from waste management issues and more from trends driving massive overproduction. Take-back programs alone can’t solve this at a cultural or systemic level—and some argue they even fuel overconsumption by easing guilt over constant buying and discarding.

This mirrors a common critique of packaging recycling: it makes people feel good without questioning if the product or packaging was needed at all. While that risk is real, especially without deeper sustainability commitments, these programs can still play a valuable role for 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 sustainability goals—not the whole sundae. Develop it only after making your products, supply chain, and production volumes as sustainable and ethical as possible.

First, review your materials, product durability, microplastic risk, production strategy, and role in promoting or discouraging overconsumption. If major improvements are still needed, focus there before launching—or be transparent that your take-back program is just one piece of a larger sustainability effort.

If you decide a take-back program fits your sustainability goals, approach it with a vision for true circularity. Start by reclaiming used goods, donating what’s reusable, and recycling or downcycling the rest—often with help from a partner.

While outsourcing eases setup, it can distance brands from the program’s strategy and impact. Commit to continually improving its transparency, effectiveness, and circularity, whether managed in-house or externally.

Repairing and reselling goods isn’t easy—it can impact short-term profits. But, as Patagonia’s Worn Wear shows, it’s a powerful way to walk the talk. Repair keeps products in use longer, reduces waste, and gives customers the option to buy pre-loved instead of new.

Don’t offload unsorted returns to nonprofits—most are already overwhelmed. Sort items first, sending only high-quality, usable goods. This makes you a valuable partner and ensures non-usable items are recycled or downcycled instead of sent to landfills or exported overseas.

Downcycling—like turning old denim into insulation or pet bedding—extends material life, but it shouldn’t be the end goal. Aim to recycle goods back into apparel and accessories. This reduces demand for virgin materials and builds true circularity.

The Ultimate Vision: Make your products from your old products. This drives innovation in textile-to-textile recycling and cuts the fashion industry’s reliance on virgin inputs.

Measure and share your program’s impact:

• % of items repaired/resold, donated, recycled, downcycled, landfilled, incinerated

• Total weight of goods received

• Contamination rates

Be honest with customers about both wins and challenges. Transparency builds trust and positions your brand as a leader in sustainable 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