There and Back Again: The Hidden Industries Progress Leaves Behind

Inspired by “There and Back Again” by David Owen, The New Yorker (8/21/23)

The Hidden Highway in Reverse

Every day, millions of packages flow backwards. Shoes that didn’t fit. Gadgets that disappointed. Clothes that looked different in real life than on a glowing screen. The returns industry is a multibillion-dollar ecosystem most of us never see. Truck fleets, warehouse crews, data systems, liquidators, and even overseas resellers exist for the sole purpose of undoing what we just did — getting something from “there” back to “here.” David Owen’s reporting on this world in The New Yorker reveals a paradox: progress in e-commerce and consumer convenience did not end with the delight of one-click buying. It also spawned a hidden network of costs — environmental, logistical, and human — that make every return a second story layered onto the first. The deeper lesson is not just about returns. It’s about a recurring pattern: every wave of progress generates its own shadow industries. These are the industries that exist not because we planned them, but because we forgot to. This hidden highway in reverse is emblematic of a broader truth: the systems we build for convenience are rarely one-directional. They require counter-systems to deal with disappointment, error, and waste. The fact that returns are now expected — even advertised as a feature of good customer service — shows how quickly society adapts to the idea that wasteful redundancy is normal. The trucks that carry returns, the warehouses that reprocess them, and the liquidators who resell or scrap them represent an industrial ecosystem as vast as production itself.

The March of Progress — and Its Shadows

Take almost any celebrated innovation, and a parallel industry soon arises to handle the unintended consequences:

Unusual Industries Born from Progress

Each of these industries is a monument not only to human ingenuity but also to human shortsightedness. We are endlessly inventive — both in the first leap of progress, and in the scramble to correct its aftershocks.

The Pattern: A Double Engine of Innovation

When Alexander Humboldt traveled the world two centuries ago, he saw everything as interconnected. Modern life makes that lesson more vivid than ever. The internet, air travel, or plastics were not just discrete leaps. They launched cascades of secondary industries — sometimes beneficial, sometimes burdensome. Think of it this way: progress runs on two engines: • The first creates new powers. • The second manages, cleans up, or reverses the side-effects. Together, these twin industries consume resources, employ millions, and shape landscapes of unintended consequence. And just as the forward engine accelerates faster with each generation of innovation, so too does the reactive engine grow more complex. We are not simply innovating once — we are creating nested cycles of innovation and correction, progress and repair.

What Comes Next? Imagining Tomorrow’s Shadow Industries

If we accept that every leap forward spawns its counter-industries, what new worlds are already on the horizon? A few possible candidates follow. These are not guaranteed, but they are plausible — and some are already quietly forming.

Designing Differently

The moral is not that progress is bad. Airplanes, antibiotics, smartphones, and global trade have changed life in dazzling ways. But progress carries blind spots, and industries like returns or recycling are reminders of what happens when we innovate without systems-level foresight. What if we designed progress with its shadows in mind? Could e-commerce build models that reduce returns rather than normalize them? Could we structure new technologies with correction mechanisms built in, rather than bolted on? Humboldt’s lesson is that nothing is isolated. When we understand interconnectedness, we can see both the benefits and the costs before they spiral into entire shadow industries. Designing differently does not mean refusing innovation. It means embracing a wider view — one in which foresight, humility, and accountability are as central as speed and scale.

• Recycling emerged because mass production filled our world with waste.

• Cybersecurity exists only because computers, networks, and data breaches do.

• E-waste management became necessary once electronics shrank in lifespan and ballooned in volume.

• Carbon offsets exist because fossil fuels made our lives convenient while heating the planet.

• Whole industries of repair, resale, and refurbishment thrive because cheap goods often fail quickly.

• Noise-cancellation headphones exist because our transportation and cities became deafening.

• Dark-sky friendly lighting manufacturers exist because we accidentally erased the night sky.

• Pet waste pickup franchises thrive because suburbanization encouraged millions of dog owners without space.

• Sleep-aid industries boom because electric light and screens disrupted our circadian rhythms.

• Identity-theft protection services flourish only because we built credit cards, digital finance, and leaky databases.

• Invasive species eradication programs are entire sectors born of global shipping and bad landscaping ideas.

• Reputation management firms thrive because the internet made slander permanent and searchable.

• Space-debris removal startups are bidding for contracts only because we cluttered orbit with satellites.

• Fatberg cleanup crews now work full-time clearing sewers clogged by “flushable” wipes.

• Allergy remediation services exist because sealed, climate-controlled buildings created new respiratory hazards.

• Online reputation managers exist only because search engines and digital permanence transformed gossip into career-threatening data.

• AI Bias Auditors: Entire firms devoted to stress-testing algorithms for fairness and transparency.

• Synthetic Biology Containment: Companies that swoop in to clean up escaped engineered microbes.

• Digital Afterlife Managers: Specialists who secure, delete, or curate the ghost-data of the deceased.

• Climate Migration Logistics: Industries that plan and coordinate the relocation of entire towns and cities.

• Drone Entanglement Crews: Local services untangling skies thick with delivery drones and hobby craft.

• Microplastic Removal Companies: Technologies to filter synthetic fragments from water, soil, and even human blood.

• Geoengineering Risk Insurers: Legal and financial firms insuring against the fallout of planetary interventions.

• Attention-Rehabilitation Programs: Clinics and courses designed to restore focus shattered by decades of digital distraction.

• Quantum Cryptography Consultants: Hired because quantum computing shatters today’s digital security.

• Urban Quieting Services: Businesses dedicated to restoring mental health through engineered soundscapes in noisy cities.

• Carbon Waste Mining: Firms specializing in extracting carbon locked in old landfills for reuse.

Sidebar: Industries We Never Meant to Build

Innovation → Unintended Consequence → Shadow Industry

• E-commerce → Customer dissatisfaction → Returns logistics

• Electric lighting → Disrupted circadian rhythms → Sleep-aid industries

• Suburban dog ownership → Pet waste accumulation → Pooper-scooper franchises

• Flushable wipes → Sewer blockages → Fatberg cleanup crews

• Space race → Orbital debris → Space-debris removal firms

• Credit cards & data breaches → Identity theft → Protection/insurance companies

• Plastics → Persistent pollution → Recycling and cleanup industries

Classroom Prompts

• What other industries can you think of that exist only because of unintended consequences?

• Do you see these shadow industries as clever adaptations, or as signs of poor foresight?

• Imagine a future technology (AI, space travel, biotech). What shadow industry might it spawn?

• If you were designing a new technology, how would you anticipate its “shadow” effects before they emerged?

• Should governments regulate new industries differently if they are created primarily to manage problems caused by old ones?

• Which example from history surprises you most, and why?

• How might the concept of 'shadow industries' change the way we evaluate new inventions today?

Sources

David Owen, “There and Back Again,” The New Yorker (August 21, 2023). Primary article describing the vast reverse-logistics network created by online shopping, showing how convenience generates entire industries to undo its own actions.

Reverse Logistics Association, “What Happens to All the Stuff We Return?” (2023). Trade-association overview explaining how U.S. holiday returns now exceed $300 billion annually—illustrating the sheer scale of this invisible economy.

KERA Think, “Where Do Your Online Returns Really End Up?” (October 2023). Public-radio discussion summarizing David Owen’s reporting and highlighting environmental and human costs of mass product returns.

McGraw-Hill Education Blog, “Product Returns Drive a Multi-Billion-Dollar Resale Industry” (2023). Describes how liquidation, refurbishment, and resale markets evolved directly from rising e-commerce returns.

Longreads, “What Happens to All the Stuff We Return?” (2023). Extended magazine feature tracing how unwanted goods are sorted, resold, or destroyed—adding context on historical return rates.

WallStreetMojo, “Shadow Accounting – What It Is, Explained, Examples.” Explains the financial concept of “shadow accounting,” a useful parallel for understanding reactive systems that emerge to correct earlier ones.

IVP Group, “The Latest Trends in Shadow Accounting: What You Need to Know.” Shows how “shadow” processes develop as safeguards against errors in complex systems, mirroring the essay’s theme of secondary industries born from progress.

Duco Blog, “Let’s Get Visible: Your Guide to Mitigating Shadow IT and De-Risking Operations.” Illustrates how hidden technological systems arise within organizations—modern examples of reactive infrastructures that must later be integrated.

© 2025 Michael A. Pink