Amazon ties up with GiveBackBox to donate items they no longer need

Amazon has announced a partnership with GiveBackBox.com, a startup launched four years ago to help customers fill the used boxes they had acquired from retailers with anything they no longer needed, to donate them to Goodwill.

Goodwill Industries International, a non-profit US organisation that provides job training, employment placement services and other community-based programmes for people who had barriers preventing them from otherwise obtaining a job.

Customers can collect used, empty Amazon boxes and those from other selected retailers and pack them with the stuff they want to donate to Goodwill. They then print a shipping label from givebackbox.com and drop the box off at UPS or the post office.

Amazon would ship the box free to the nearest participating Goodwill point.

According to commentators, it was not just a good way to give back to others during the holiday season it was also great way to clear one's home of clutter and used packaging.

In a recent study, the National Retail Federation (NRF), found that over half of US consumers surveyed planned to do their holiday shopping online. The figure was even higher with the millennial population, which would conduct 62 per cent of purchases online.

The figures were confirmed by Deloitte stating in its 2016 holiday spending forecasts that just two years ago in 2014 store spending still exceeded online spending by 12 per  cent. Today, consumers shop online just as much as in physical stores, and the figure for online shopping was rising.