It is important to distinguish between damaged products that can’t be sold due to consumer safety considerations and post-consumer products (products that have been sold and used by the consumer). Damaged products make up an infinitely small percentage of the goods we produce.

Damaged products

• In BESTSELLER, we dispose of damaged products (mostly due to water and mould damages occurring during transportation) that cannot be sold or reused in any other way due to consumer safety considerations.
  
  
• Damaged products are disposed in the most economically and environmentally suitable way: down-cycling by converting damaged products to energy through combustion. Seeking to wash the mould out of damaged products would require additional resources (water, chemicals, transportation, handling) and even then, traces of mould might still remain.
  
  
• The number of damaged products being converted into energy constitutes approximately 0.1 per mille of the total number of products being shipped to our central warehouse. It is the equivalent of a supermarket discarding one in 10,000 tomatoes that has gone bad.

Claims and excess products from stores

• BESTSELLER has no financial or environmental interest in destroying undamaged products. We always strive to optimise our buying process to have the right products, at the right time and at the right price in the stores.
  
  
• In BESTSELLER, handling excess products and claims is the responsibility of the individual stores. The majority of the stores’ excess products are sold at reduced prices. Some stores’ claims are redistributed to the recycling company I:CO that either redistributes the products for reuse or recycles the fibres for insulation in other industries or as playground surfaces. Other stores return the claims and possible excess products to our central warehouse that resells the items to other markets and others donate the products to the Danish Red Cross.
  
  For example, an initiative from SELECTED FEMME/HOMME allows consumers to give their used clothes a second life. As of March 2022, clothes and shoes can be donated for reuse or recycling at any Danish SELECTED store.